Why doesn't this Vim macro work?

Question

I recorded this macro to register a in Neovim by first pressing qa:

Macro

--- Registers ---
"a   f1F1i-^[la0^[j

Then I pressed q and my cursor was left in normal mode at the position marked by | (so that m is highlighted) in the below JavaScript snippet (on line 4).

JavaScript snippet

  timeout = setTimeout(function() {
    mw_panel.style.left="-10em";
    mw_head.style.left="-10em";
    content.style.left="1e|m";
    left_navigation.style.left="1em";
    footer.style.left="1em";
  }, 350);

Then I tried to apply the macro with @a but nothing happened. I tried the same in Vim and nothing happened. Though the macro will move the cursor to the 1 if I move it away before using it. Am I not understanding something about how Vim macros work?

Answer 1

Macros abort when they fail at some point. In your example, f1 fails since there is no 1 after the cursor. To solve it, you can set "a to, say, 0f1i-^[la0^[j.

Answer 2

I would use sdp's suggestion 0f1i-^[la0^[j in a case like this, but my original macro could "directly" be made to work by absorbing the errors by the method described in this answer:

:try|exe "norm! f1"|endtry|try|exe "norm! F1"|endtry^Mi-^[la0^[j