Question

This is probably a dumb question but I figured I share my experience as well.

While recording a macro, I was trying to use ex commands I had done previously by cycling through them with the up arrow. My macro was breaking somewhere and I’m assuming it’s because the macro is recording keystrokes and not necessarily the contents of what I execute?

If so, is there a way around this?

Answer 1

You are right, macros are literal recordings of what you type, so you have to be a little careful. Completing Ex commands with Tab probably works better than recalling entire history items with Up.

You can view the contents of a recorded macro (e.g. for register q):

:new
:put q

You can then even edit the macro, and update it via 0"qy$ or

:let @q = getline('.')