Multi cursor support in VSCode replaced 98% of my need for macros. Yes, macros are more powerful, but they are pretty easy to get wrong. With multiple cursors, it's far easier to spot where your inputs don't work out and adjust accordingly.
replyMulti cursor is the feature that increased my productivity the most across the board.
Forget macros and multi-cursor. (Regex) substitutions from vim's command line replaced 98% of my editing needs and rendered a lot of my vim-fu useless.
reply(Just like searching with / replaced 98% of my navigation)
Editing something without having to actually place the cursor anywhere is a killer feature
Also neovim can show you your substitutions live, no need for a plugin anymore. It's the default.
Bro, not every guy/girl is a regex master, multi-cursor is a much better UI/UX wysiwyg editor for everyday users.
replyWord Bro! Regex is so simple to read and easy to get right... and its like if Immanuel Kant wrote find and replace, yeah, learn a new language to do a single function... yEAH! 98% Bro!
I'd marry Regex if I could (but if we got divorced it would be my exregex [which is almost a palindrome!] Bro!)
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replyWithout meaning to sound like the “friendship ended” meme, I was a heavy user of macros in vim and neovim. It was probably my favourite feature. After I switched to Helix, I began using multiple cursors and now those are my favourite feature, I barely use macros anymore. Being able to see your movements live and intelligently using multiple clipboard is not just powerful, it’s fun too and rewards well-designed code.
replyProper macros are vim and emacs one. They have proper movement shortcut that fits both code and prose.
replyEspecially as code is formal notation, such that it’s structured quite rigidly, macros composition can be seen as a meta language. Multi cursors is more suited for the “work hard, not smart”, like preferring litteral search instead of learning regex.
Looking forward to multiple cursors… but Vim/Neovim can already do some of the common use-cases for multiple cursors, like prepending (or appending) text to a bunch of lines using visual block mode [1].
replyHere’s a video example [2]:
[1]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/usr_10/#_visual-block-mode
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/jai57c/the_usefulness_...
Kakoune has replaced many features with multicursor, including the sed-like commands (where you just select an area, search for patterns inside it to create the multiple cursors, then perform regular edits (which also means you can perform much more complex than simple replaces).
It is really useful for refactors, e.g. even if you don't have any LSP (e.g. for plain text) you can easily rename symbols, reorder/select in log files, etc
replyI'm not sure how people typically use neovim, but in Zed I find multiple cursors (especially combined with multiple file buffers) extremely ergonomic for refactoring quickly and easily where tools like find and replace or simple renaming doesn't suffice. It lets you scan through and add cursors where you need them, then perform your edits across locations and even files all at once. It's so nice that it played a significant role in me keeping Zed early on despite it missing a lot of extensions I used in VS Code.
replyNot sure I under the Zed argument, VSCode has supported milti-cursors since the very beginning. It was made popular (not invented) by Sublime Text because it made it reaaaally easy (middle click+drag), so Atom and VSCode carried the feature.
replyI am so used to sed-style, regex powered find/replace, that this use admittedly never occured to me. As a result, multi-cursor seemed mostly useless outside of pair programming that I never do.
replyI will have to try it out once it lands in neovim just to see if I can wrap my muscle memory around it.
I've always told myself I should learn to do these sed/regex find and replace techniques, but my origins are not sophisticated and I use computers like that orangutan hammering nails in the video with David Attenborough https://youtu.be/IFACrIx5SZ0?si=NcWGBNq272KoYB2i&t=84
replyIt's entirely possible that you don't need multiple cursors
For me the nice thing about multiple cursors is when it would take more time to write the regex than it does to just throw down say 8 cursors and update the spots.
replyHow do you place the cursors then?
replyIn vim?
replyCtrl+v, 8, j, shift+i, add the text, Esc.
Which works if you need to edit several aligned lines in a row. The one thing I'm missing is putting the cursors on the next found position of a search term which would make it much more useful.
There’s an overlap between “Find and Replace” and Macros, but it’s too small for multi cursors to be particularly useful for me. Especially with emacs where I can bring up all the lines in a separate buffer and edit them there (occur-mode) or do the same for a set of files (grep-mode and wgrep)
replyYou have very convenient macros.
If there is something you want to do in places you are going to mark first then you can just execute it right there instead. If it's just one edit you just do it right there without macro and use the dot to repeat it in more places.
replyIf those places can be created automatically then again it's just a macro you execute over many lines.
You'd do text editing with it with the coolest feedback loop - immediately seeing the changes and what those changes apply to beforehand, that's different from having to repeat some macro multiple times
replyHighlighted search/replace does this pretty well too.
reply"Image API: vim.ui.img"
replyOh neat!
Really excited about this! At least in Sublime Text I've found multiple cursors a really powerful tool for ad-hoc transformations on snippets of semi-structured text or instantly and visually applying the same edit on multiple similar lines.
replyWhats with all the fuss over multicursor. How is this different from just using '.'
replydot repeat is the wrong comparison. A closer one would be macros, but even then a good multiple cursors implementation is often faster, more intuitive, and requires less cognitive overhead. One of the better examples of the usefulness of multiple cursors is from Emacs Rocks (link goes to 0:23):
replyWhat do you when the things you want to change don't all fit on the screen at once?
replyAt least in e.g. Emacs and sublime text, you can mark all occurrences throughout the entire file. Assuming the matches are similar enough that the same motions apply even if you can't see the cursor, you can perform those operations.
replyOtherwise, as a sibling comment said, incremental search/replace is your friend.
You do a search/replace which has a similar function, although applied differently.
replyLookup helix tutorial. It’s pretty useful.
replyMultiple cursors were the killer feature that got me to start using Sublime Text back in ~2010. Still an absolute staple of my text editing toolbox. Ctrl-D Ctrl-D Ctrl-D ...
replyone cursor for you one cursor for claude code :)
replyLLMs: Look, I can write code!
neovim users: hold my beer, multicursor is here!
replyIt's funny because I miss this one all the time. I got use it in Sublime and VScode before making the jump to Neovim. I know you can get similar functionality from macros and what not, but it's just not the same.
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