A more powerful version of dot (repeat)

Question

I know about recording with q into registers, but I was wondering if it's possible to set something up to quickly recall the last recording, in much the same way that . recalls the last short editing command (see here for a discussion on .).

I know about @@ but it only seems to work after doing @z where z is the register used. e.g. to make the recording you must type qz, go on to do your thing, q, and then in order to run the recording you must @z before you can start @@-ing to repeat that.

My hack solution now is a bind nnoremap , @q which lets me do recordings with qq and ending them with q. Is there something better (e.g. something that records into a particular register with a single keystroke, or something that specifically repeats the last-recorded macro)? admittedly that isn't a huge improvement, as it's pretty optimal already.

For me a single register that is easy to use is generally more useful than a large number of registers that require a bit more work to get at. Though this could just be that I'm bad at remembering things and don't see myself effectively making use of more than one.

Answer 1

Since you like to use the same register for all your macros and just record over it as needed, you can set and execute that register in your _vimrc file so that @@ is "primed".

In your _vimrc file, add:

let @z = ''
execute 'normal @z'

Now, as soon as you record a macro in register z, you can immediately execute it with @@.