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I use VIM pretty regularly now but I never use the dot (.) command to repeat the previous action. I keep reading about how awesome it is but I never see any real world examples that make sense to me and the way I code in VIM. What are some real world examples that show how awesome the dot (.) command is?
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The dot command The dot command is a simple and powerful tool in Vim. It allows repeating the last change by pressing the . (period) key in Normal mode.
The ! qualifier tells Vim to force the operation. For example, if the file was read-only you would use :w! to write it anyway. If the file was modified and you wanted to quit without saving, you would use :q!. :wq! just means force write and quit in one command.
vim Normal mode commands (Editing) Repeat the Last Change Your cursor will be at position 1 of line 1, and all you need to do to fix the next two lines is press j. twice - that is, j to move down a line and . to repeat the last change, which was the addition of the I .
Here are some actions that I do with the dot command:
:%s/\<word\>/replacement/gc is * on the word, then cereplacement<esc> and then repeat n.. This is nice if you have two or three occurrences of your word. If you have several words that you want to replace, then go to the next word, hit * and again n. <Ctrl-V>jjj<..... or insert spaces at the front: <ctrl-v>jjjI<space><esc>.... dd or dw, the dot command will delete another line/wordA magical thing that happens with the dot command is that if it repeats a command that used a numbered register, it will use the next numbered register (see :help redo-register).
Explanation: If you did dd on 9 lines and want to restore them in the order in which you've deleted them, then do: "1P......... Note that registers 1 to 9 are Vim's delete-ring. "1P will insert before the cursor the last deleted text, "2P will then insert prior-to-last deleted text, and so on.
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