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I want to format a block of text and I am using a range to select the leading comment of a function. It's all lines starting with // ....

I'm using the range

:?^[^\/][^\/]?+1,/^[^\/][^\/]/-1

to select backwards up to the first line not starting with //, then plus one to get the the start of the comment, and similar thing for the forward search.

If I prefix this with a sed command like s,^,#, this works. But if I use gq or gw as command it fails telling me Not an editor command: ...

How can I apply the text format command to a range?

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    gq and gw are normal commands: you can't enter them in command mode like :gq... that's why you get Not an editor command. You can use normal gq to use them in a script.
    – statox
    Mar 31, 2016 at 15:01

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Per @statox comment...

Using normal commands applied to ranges is the same as when they are used in scripts, requiring the normal function to be called.

:?^[^\/][^\/]?+1,/^[^\/][^\/]/-1norm gq

A very common example of this is applying a macro to each line in a visually selected area. Lets say you want to uppercase the last word on each line:

qq$viwUq

If you visually select an area and enter command mode you can apply the macro using normal

:'<,'>normal @q
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