Let’s assume that we recorded a macro to do some work on any given line and we want to repeat that macro n-times on contiguous lines. We have two ways of doing that:
- Execute the macro in series such as
5@a. This will queue 5 repititions of the macro in series starting at the current line and continues forward. The execution of the macro on the next line is dependent on the execution of the macro on the current line being successful. If it fails for any reason, the execution of the macro for the remaining lines will abort. - Execute the macro in parallel such as
'<,>':normal @a. This will queue up number of lines in the visual selection repititions of the macro in parallel. This means the execution of the macro on each line is independent of the execution on other lines. Therefore, even if one execution failed, the macro will still be applied to the remaining lines.
Which one to use depends on the use case. If we want the error to be obvious, then execution in series is better.