Can one put control characters into a text so that when I copy and paste it in Vim it exits insert mode and does something nasty in command mode?
The short answer seems to be "yes". I was able to put the following in my clipboard:
hello<Escape>:!date<CR>
and when I pasted it into vim while in insert mode hello was typed and then the shell opened up and the date command was run.
Obviously if I can run the date command in the shell I can do much more nasty stuff.
To get that string in my paste buffer I opened vim and typed hello<C-V><Esc>:!date<C-V><Enter>. I then had to save that file, open it with Kate and copy the contents that way (copying from vim didn't preserve the control characters).
That depends on the environment, and the Vim command used.
Graphical GVIM can differentiate pastes from typed keys, but in the terminal, this is not (generally) possible. That's why Vim has the 'paste' and 'pastetoggle' options, to tell Vim what is expected. Despite that, if the character stream contains a key like <Esc> that switches modes, Vim will do so.
Instead of pushing text into Vim, it is safer to pull with Vim's put command: "*p. There, special characters like <Esc> will be inserted literally into the buffer; Vim won't switch modes here. The only Vim command that interprets register contents as typed (and therefore is susceptible to mode switch commands) is i_CTRL-R. To avoid that, one should use any of the other command variants, e.g. i_CTRL-R_CTRL-R.
summary
Pull text into Vim instead of pushing it; if you avoid the i_CTRL-R command (or neuter it by remapping it), this is safe. Additionally, the :registers command allows you to inspect all contents before pasting.
Related
For quick execution of some commands I want to type them somewhere, then paste them into vim for execution. A while (some years or 10 years ago) this worked. Nowadays, vim enters insert mode and my commands get inserted into my file. I know that I can have macros for that, but for quick repetition of some commands this was very useful. Couldnt find anything about it, coz when asking for vim and paste only answers related to :set paste etc show up. Example of pasted text:
/foo
yy?bar
p/foo
j
Should, when pasted in command mode, search for the next foo, yank the line, search backwards for next bar, then paste the yanked foo-line, then go behind that foo-line.
Again, to make it clear: I dont want to know about workarounds (makros, scripts, and so on), I want to know how to disable (temporarily) vim from distinguishing between text typed with keyboard and text pasted.
This is the result of "bracketed paste mode". See :help xterm-bracketed-paste.
Disable "bracketed paste mode" by clearing 't_BE':
set t_BE=
If your Vim has been compiled with clipboard support then you can just leave 't_BE' as is and instead execute clipboard as a register via #* or #+ which will probably be more "idiomatic" way to handle such use case.
For more informations see :h #.
I had this same problem...
I have LARGE files of vim commands that I use to bulk reformatting hundreds of plain text files. That is I would: paste commands, next file, paste commands, next file, and in so doing edit hundreds of files, with the given set of vim commands, in just a minute or so...
Then it all suddenly stopped working because Bracketed Paste mode was added... (part of patch 8.0.0238 I believe).
However I still liked the added ability to paste text when in insert mode, without vim auto-indent making a mess of the inserted text, so did not want to lose that either...
My solution, was to disable paste while in normal or command modes,
while leaving brackets paste as in for insert mode...
nmap <PasteStart> <NOP>
nmap <PasteEnd> <NOP>
cmap <PasteStart> <NOP>
cmap <PasteEnd> <NOP>
Vim always manages to clip off at least of couple of characters when I copy something from a text file, such as a public rsa key for example.
Generally, I open a text file in my computer, highlight the text, copy it to my clipboard. I go into my terminal (with Vim already open) and then:
i (for insert)
ctrl+shift+v
Am I doing something wrong?
I've double checked, and triple checked, this, and I am absolutely sure that I highlighted all of the text that I needed to copy. Other times it works fine. There does not seem to be any consistency in regards to when it happens.
Anyone experience this?
This usually happens because something in the pasted text triggers a key mapping unexpectedly. This is what paste mode is for.
Do this before pasting:
:set paste
And turn it off after:
:set nopaste
This can be annoying to type frequently, so there is a way to map it to a key combination. I use ,p for this, and have this in my .vimrc:
set pastetoggle=,p
(Yes, I use an actual comma here, not <Leader>. That's because <Leader> won't work here, as this isn't technically a mapping.)
This is a toggle, so you can use it to turn the mode on and off. It works in both normal mode and insert mode.
You do want to turn it off after the paste. Since paste mode disables your insert mappings, you don't want to leave it on all the time.
You can read more about the paste option with :help 'paste.
The annoyance of toggling to and form paste mode can be avoided by using "+p or "*p. (You're putting the quoteplus register).
More often than not, I prefer "+P, since this leaves my cursor at the end of properly formatted put. see :help quoteplus for details. So the whole workflow is:
outside of vim: copy to clipboard
inside of vim: "+P
Is there a command which shows what was the last command in normal mode?
Suppose I accidently hit random key and got some unexpected result.
Sure I can undo it, but could I reveal what key was pressed and how it was interpreted?
Hit the colon (:) and then use the up arrow to start going back through previous commands. You can use the up/down arrows too to move around the list.
q: will show you command history in Vim.
q/ will show you history of searches.
And must importantly, :q will quit the mode.
The text from the last command is stored in the . register. You can see all registers by :display. Unfortunately it doesn't say what the started the normal command.
To see commands from : (command mode) you can use :hist or q: which is limited to the last 20 (by default).
Another ability is to save the undo buffer :wundo undo.bin -- but the undo buffer is binary.
But none of these actually answer your question. I'm curious if it can be done.
Entering colon : then ctrl+p shows your previous command, i.e., moving backward through your vim command history. ctrl+n moves forward.
This is very convenient if you're used to using the command line and prefer not to change your keyboard hand positioning to use arrow keys.
It is difficult to know it. You can play with the variables:
v:operator
v:count (and v:prevcount)
v:register
But you cannot fully get the last normal mode command issued.
However if you want to systematically record everything you type while in Vim, you can launch vim -W ~/.vim-last-scriptout (a Windows version: vim -W "%HOMEPATH%\Vim\.last-scriptout) You can alias it in your shell on a UNIX machine. Every single key, or control-key, will be recorded into that file. Note that if you happen to use gvim or vim -g (the GUI) you might encounter this bug.
If you want to replay this file you can use :source! (with the exclamation mark) or the -s option from the command line.
On Windows I have set gvimportable.exe -W gvim_directory\last_scriptout as my default editor in my Commander program (FreeCommander). This way I can always remember what I have typed to do something and repeat a sequence of commands on another file. Of course I have another shortcut for opening Vim and playing the scriptout.
Note that the file might be written only when Vim exits, so you have to lose your session to know what you've done.
I'm aware of the vim replace command, which is of the form, eg:
:%s/old/new/gc
But what if either of these strings is long? How can I use something like visual selection mode, the clipboard or vim registers instead of having to type the old/new text in?
You can use q: to bring up a command-line window. This lets you use all the vim editing commands to edit the vim command line, including p to paste. So, you could copy the text into a register, paste it into the command line window, and execute it that way.
I recently discovered this feature via vimcasts.
According to the manual, you can use Ctrl+R to insert the contents of a register into the current position in the command line. The manual also claims that Ctrl+Y inserts the text highlighted with the mouse into the command line. Remember that in X11 and some other systems, you can also paste text into a program from the system clipboard using the middle mouse button or a menu command in your terminal emulator.
I think to avoid have your command line be huge you can use this to solve your issue
:%s/foo/\=#a/g
That replaces "foo" with whatever is in register a.
If you're trying to do a substitute with a long complicated search pattern, here's a good way of going about it:
Try out the search pattern using some test cases and refine it until you have the pattern you want. I find incsearch really helps, especially with complicated regular expressions.
You can then use :%s//new to replace all instances of the last searched for pattern.
If you've entered a pattern and want to copy it out of the search history, you can use q/ to bring up a command line window containing recent search patterns very similar to the q: one that contains recent command history.
On the other hand, if you're asking about how to copy and paste text into the substitute command:
I'd write the pattern out in insert mode and yank the search and replacement into two distinct registers using, say, "ay and "by and then use :%s/<C-R>a/<C-R>b/gc to do the substitute. There are lots of variations of the yank command, but this one should also work automatically when using a visual selection.
If you're copying in text from the clipboard, you can use <C-R>* to paste it's contents in insert mode.
I have the following mapping in my .vimrc
vnoremap <leader>r "ry:%s/^Rr/
So I visually select the thing I want to replace, and hit ,r, type the replacement and hit return. If I want to paste the replacement, I yank it before selecting the text to replace, and then use <C-r>" to paste it as the replacement before hitting return.
Note: to insert ^R in your .vimrc, you actually type <C-v><C-r>.
I've used vi for decades, and am now practicing using vim, expecting
eventually to switch to it entirely.
I have a number of questions, but I'll start with the one that
troubles me most. Something I have long done in vi is to type
a bottom-line command into the file I am editing, yank it to a named buffer
(e.g., using the keystrokes "ayy) and execute that buffer (using
:#a^M). This allows me to edit complicated commands till they
work right, and to keep commands that I will use many times as I
work in a file. (I have
in my .exrc file a mapping that reduces this yank-and-execute to a
single keystroke; but that isn't relevant to my question.)
I find that in vim, I need a lot more ^Vs than in vi. This
means, on the one hand, that when I have some command-line in a file
that I expect to use this way, I now need to keep it in two
versions, one for vi and one for vim. Also, the requirement of the
extra ^Vs seems inelegant: evidently various special characters
that are interpreted once when the named buffer is executed in vi
are interpreted twice when its is executed in vim -- but why?
As an example, a command of the form
map =f :w^V|e foo^M
(mapping the keystroke-sequence =f to write the current file
and go to the file foo) works this way in vi, but has to have the form
map =f :w^V^V|e foo^V^M
in vim. (Here in both commands, ^V is gotten by typing ^V^V,
and ^M is gotten by typing ^V^M; so typing the first version
involves typing three ^Vs, and the second, seven.) To be
exact: the first version does work in vim if one actually
types it into the bottom line (with the indicated extra ^Vs);
but the latter is required in an executed named buffer.
Any explanation? Anything I can set to fix this? ("compatible"
doesn't seem to do it.) Any hope that it will be fixed in a future
release? (The system I am on uses version 7.0.)
(I should confess that I'm not a programmer; just a user who has
become proficient in vi.)
Personally, I'd stop using ^V completely. In Vim (I've no idea about Vi), there are various key notations that get round the problems you're having. For your specific example, I'd recommend:
map =f :w<bar>e foo<CR>
where <bar> means 'insert the vertical bar here' and <CR> means 'insert a carriage return here'. See:
:help key-notation
for more information. I find the <CR> much easier to understand than ^V^M.
That's an interesting way of using :#, which I hadn't thought of before. I generally just use the command line history when I need to edit complicated commands, and I tend to save common or complicated commands as mappings or commands in my .vimrc (of course, I have a mapping that will pop open my .vimrc in a new tab). But there are certainly benefits to using vim's normal mode rather than command line mode for editing a complicated command.
As I understand it, you not only want to avoid so many <C-V> characters, you would also like to be able to use the same commands in vim and vi. Unfortunately, that would preclude you from using the (preferred in vim) key-notation. I think that you should be able to use the cmdline mode's Ctrl-R Ctrl-R register to help you out (:help c_<C-R>_<C-R>). E.g.
map <Leader>e mm^"ay$`m:<C-R><C-R>a<CR>
mm - mark cursor location so we can return later
^"ay$ - yank current line into register a (ignoring whitespace at beginning and newline at end)
``m` - return cursor to start position
: - enter command line mode
<C-R><C-R>a - place the literal contents of register a onto the command line, which seems to be where your problem with vim versus vi was coming to into play. I think that <C-R>a would give you the same behaviour you are seeing now with :#a.
- execute the whole thing
Using that mapping, I then typed your example of map =f :w^V|e foo^M into a file, placed my cursor on that line, ran my <Leader>e mapping, verified that your =f mapping had loaded correctly, and then ran it. Obviously you'll want to customize it to fit your needs, but I think that playing around with <C-R><C-R> will basically get you what you want.
All of that said, if you can, I'd strongly recommend taking the plunge and forgetting about compatibility with vi. Then you can use the much simpler key-notation and a host of other vim features. :-)