How do I repeat any command in Vim, like "C-x z" in emacs?

Question

In Vim, is there any way to repeat the last command regardless of whether it was an edit or not, and without having the foresight to first record a macro?

E.g. say I type :bn, and want to do it again (it was the wrong file). Pressing . obviously doesn't do it. Or maybe I'm doing gE and want to repeat that (with one keystroke since clearly gE is kinda painful to type).

Perhaps there are some plugins? Similar to this question.

(Even cooler would be to retroactively bind a number of commands to a macro, so one could type 5qa@a or something to repeat the last 5 commands...)

Ravikiran · Answer 1 · 2011-01-25T07:03:39.520

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To repeat a command-line command, try @:, To repeat a normal/insert-mode command, try .,

Add below mapping to your .vimrc if you want to shortcut the same:-

:noremap <C-P> @:<CR> - This will map Ctrl+P to previous command-line command. You can map any other combo.

edited Jan 25 '11 at 07:03

answered Jan 25 '11 at 04:00

Ravikiran

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So how about normal-mode commands like "gE"? There's a ":norm" command for executing normal-mode commands from the command line, but it doesn't repeat... – johv Jan 25 '11 at 05:33
what does `gE` do anyways ? i tried `dw` to delete a word, and then i pressed `.` to delete another word – Ravikiran Jan 25 '11 at 07:01
It's a motion command, "Backward to the end of WORD", the reverse of E. – johv Jan 25 '11 at 08:41
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ctr+P is used for autocompletion of code, so you probably don't wont to remap it to that – Ferdinando Randisi May 27 '14 at 14:16
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Ctrl+P is also mapped to the so-known plugin CtrlP – Patrick Bassut Aug 20 '14 at 03:53
autocomplete mapping is usually insert mode mapping (imap), so you can use nmap if you only want to enable a map when in normal mode. – Lie Ryan Nov 01 '18 at 04:31

Matt Glover · Answer 2 · 2011-01-25T04:08:26.103

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:help repeating will provide the typical repeat commands (like ., @:, etc.). You could try repeat.vim. That may get you closer to what you are looking for.

edited Jan 25 '11 at 04:08

answered Jan 25 '11 at 04:01

Matt Glover

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score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 12:01

For motion commands there is no mechanism built into Vim. The Find and To commands (f/F/t/T) have ; and , to repeat and reverse. There are a couple of plugins which extend those bindings to repeat other motion commands:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2174

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3665

The later should support repeating gE using ;

Manan · Answer 4 · 2016-07-29T20:33:14.387

You can just use "."

Example: You have "abc" at 10 places in your file and you want to replace it with "def" at 5 places of it.

Step 1: Find first occurance of abc by typing command "/abc"
Step 2: Once cursor is on "abc", Replace abc by command "cw" to take out word "abc"
Step 3: Type in "def" as replacement and press enter to go to command mode
Step 4: To repeat this action just type command "n" to go to next occurrence of abc and type command "." . The command remembers that you replaced "abc" with "def" last time and will perform the same here.

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 18 '13 at 08:51

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You can map @: to some key for more convenience:

:map <F2> @:

and then it's easier to use it with repeats.

answered Jun 18 '13 at 08:51

insider

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How do I repeat any command in Vim, like "C-x z" in emacs?

5 Answers5