^ What they said. (I was terse on my way to bed yesterday.)
The big benefit of `!` is that, like anything else in visual mode, it works with motion operators. I often write fragments of shell, e.g. to generate something repetitive, and run it with `!!` (doubling for the current line, same as things like `dd` or `yy`), `!}` (block), or `!G' (rest of file).
The big benefit of `!` is that, like anything else in visual mode, it works with motion operators. I often write fragments of shell, e.g. to generate something repetitive, and run it with `!!` (doubling for the current line, same as things like `dd` or `yy`), `!}` (block), or `!G' (rest of file).