(Neo)vim Macro to Create Numbered Lists

I usually encounter this when saving notes about list of items that are not numbered but are generally better off being itemized. Since this is such a common scenario I did find a couple of posts1 2 that explained the method but they had edge cases which were not handled properly.

Say you want to note down a shopping list and then decide to number it later,

Soy milk
Carrots
Tomatoes
Pasta

Start off by numbering the first line and then move the cursor to the second line. Then, the steps are

  1. Start recording the macro into a register, say a, by using qa.
  2. Press k to go one line up.
  3. yW to copy one big word, in this case “1. ”.
  4. Then j to come one line down and | to go to the start of the line.
  5. Use [p to paste before and | to go the beginning.
  6. To increment, Ctrl+A and then j and | to set it up for subsequent runs.

To run the macro, go to the next line and execute @a. For repeating it 3 times, you can use 3@a.

  1. https://stackoverflow.com/a/4224521 ↩︎

  2. https://techedemic.com/2013/04/15/using-vim-to-create-a-numbered-list-e-g-list-of-ip-addresses/ ↩︎

Have you written a response to this? Let me know the URL