I've got some method calls all over the place in a large file, I'd like to match these lines, select and then yank them as one so I can put them all in a single place.
I can find all the lines I want with :g/>set but how do I visually select each line?
You can't have multiple visual selections in Vim.
But you can clear a register and append all the matching lines to it:
:let #a = ''
:g/>set/y A
then create an empty buffer (or navigate to an existing one):
:vnew
and paste from register a:
"ap
But you probably want something like TagList or TagBar.
edit
:[something]y a
means "yank into register a".
:[something]y A
means "append to register a".
What I usually do is :
Remove all the lines without the pattern :v/pattern/d
Select the whole new file with ggyG
Paste somewhere the result with p
Use undo a few times with u to get the file back to its initial state
This is a bit cumbersome, I would welcome a simpler solution.
Related
let(:aaaaa) { 123 }
let(:bb) { true }
let(:ccc_ccc) { "foo bar" }
I want to copy all variable names (:aaaaa, :bb, :ccc_ccc).
In VsCode, for example, I would use a multi-line selection.
How can I do it in VIM?
Block selection didn't work, once the variable names have a different length.
You could use the command :%norm f:"Qyt) to make your 'q register' contain the
following:
:aaaaa:bb:ccc_ccc
The way it works is as follows:
:%norm means 'to all lines, apply the following normal commands'
f: moves the cursor to the first colon on the line
"Qy appends yanked text to the 'q' register
t) is a motion 'till the next closing parenthesis
This assumes that the 'q' register is already empty (you can use qqq to clear
it). If you only want to do this for a subset of lines, you'd replace the %
with a range (or visual selection).
What you do with the register's contents after that is up to you.
"qp will put them into the buffer, and maybe you'd then do :s/:/\r:/g to
split the lines at the colons like this:
:aaaaa
:bb
:ccc_ccc
If your immediate goal is to have something like this in the default register:
:aaaaa
:bb
:ccc_ccc
then it won't be easy to achieve without the ability to visually select multiple non-contiguous pieces of text of arbitrary length, which Vim doesn't have out of the box.
This means that, if we don't want to use a multiple cursors plugin, we are left with more pedestrian ways involving substitutions, macros, etc.
Assuming the cursor is on the first line, you could do something like:
:,+2t+2 " copy the block below itself
:'[,s/.*(\(.*\)).*/\1 " remove everything you don't need
:'[,d " cut the three lines to the unnamed register
But Vim works best when it is used with intent. "Copy this" is rarely a goal in and of itself: it generally is one of the several low-level steps necessary to complete a higher-level task (which itself might be one of the steps of another even higher-level task). What one intends to do with the copied text often plays an important role in choosing the best strategy. Here, your actual goal may have been to get the three variable names on three lines right below their definition, something that actually doesn't imply copying them, so the two first steps would have been enough.
As part of a project of mine I'm trying to move certain lines from a file to the top, sorted in a certain fashion. I'm not sure how to do the sort once those lines are up there - I don't want to disturb the other lines in the file.
I'm moving them by yanking them and putting them back down, like so:
g:/pattern/yank A
g:/pattern/d
0put A
This moves all the lines I specify up to the top of the file like I need, but now I need to sort them according to a pattern, like so:
[range]sort r /pattern2/
Is there a way to sort the contents of a register before pasting it? Or a way to sort only lines which match /pattern/? (because all the yanked lines will, of course).
I'm stymied and help would be appreciated.
edit - a possible workaround might be to count the number of lines before they're yanked, and then use that to select and sort those lines once they're placed again. I'm not sure how to count those lines - I can print the number of lines that match a pattern with the command :%s/pattern//n but I can't do anything with that number, or use that in a function.
The whole point of :g/pattern/cmd is to execute cmd on every line matching pattern. cmd can, of course, be :sort.
In the same way you did:
:g/pattern/yank A
to append every line matching pattern to register a and:
:g/pattern/d
to cut every line matching pattern, you can do:
:g/pattern/sort r /pattern2/
to sort every line matching pattern on pattern2.
Your example is wasteful anyway. Instead of abusing registers with three commands you could simply do:
:g/pattern/m0
to move every line matching pattern to the top of the buffer before sorting them with:
:g//sort r /pattern2/
See :help :global, :help :sort, :help :move.
I know this is old, and may not be of any use to you anymore, but I just figured this one out today. It relies on the system's sort command (not vim's). Assuming you're saving to register A:
qaq
:g/pattern/yank A
<C-O>
:put=system('sort --stable --key=2,3',#A)
qaq: clears register A of anything
:g/pattern/yank A: searches current buffer for pattern and copies it to register A
<C-O>: pressing Ctrl+O in normal mode returns you to the last place your cursor was
:put=system('sort --stable --key=2,3',#A): sends the contents of register A to the sort command's STDIN and pastes the output to the current position of the cursor.
I mapped this whole thing to <F8>:
noremap <F8> qaq:g/pattern/yank A<CR><C-O>:put=system('sort --stable --key=2,3',#A)<CR>
I don't know how janky this is considered, cuz I'm a complete noob to vim. I spent hours today trying to figure this out. It works for me and I'm happy with it, hopefully it'll help someone else too.
I've only recently learned about use v command to mark a section I want to copy or cut. This is great!
But I'd like to use the v command to make the section I want to replace.
For example:
$another_obj->method_in_obj
$self->method_actually_in_obj
I want to mark "another_obj" and overwrite "self" with "another_obj". Basically I want to tell vim that, I want to take these 4 characters (self) and turn them into these 11 characters (another_obj) and have vim adjust my line accordingly.
So the final should be:
$another_obj->method_in_obj
$another_obj->method_actually_in_obj
Thanks!
#Kent has outlined the basic approach: You yank the source word, then paste over the selected replacement. The downside is that you can do that only once, because that action overrides the original yanked text! To avoid that, you need to specify the black-hole register.
I do this so often, I wrote a plugin to simplify and allow maximum speed: ReplaceWithRegister.
This plugin offers a two-in-one gr command that replaces text covered by a {motion} / text object, entire line(s) or the current selection with the contents of a register; the old text is deleted into the black-hole register, i.e. it's gone. It transparently handles many corner cases and allows for a quick repeat via the standard . command. Should you not like it, its page has links to alternatives.
cursor on [a]nother, pressing yw
then j cursor is on [s]elf, press:vawp
In Vim, let's say I want to replace the contents of one String with the content of another.
Original input
var1 = "January"
var2 = "February"
Desired output
var1 = "January"
var2 = "January"
What I would usually do is:
Move cursor to line 1
y i " (yank inner quotes)
Move cursor to the destination quote in line 2
v i " p (visual select inner quotes, paste)
While this works well, I generally try to avoid visual mode when possible, so I am not completely satisfied with my step 4 (v i " p).
Is there any way to specify a "destination paste area" without using Visual mode? I suspect it might be something chained to g, but I can't think of anything.
There are many ways of doing this however using visual mode is the easiest.
Use the black hole register to delete the content then paste. e.g. "_di"P
Do ci"<c-r>0. <c-r> inserts the contents of a register
Simply paste and then move over a character and delete the old text. e.g pldt"
However visual mode still has my vote. I find that the concerns most people have is that using visual mode + paste is that the default register is swap with the selected text and it doesn't repeat well. Good news everybody! The 0 register always stores the last yank. The bad news is visual mode still doesn't repeat well. Take a look at this vimcast episode, Pasting from Visual mode, for more information. It mentions a few plugin that help with this.
I need this so often, I wrote a plugin to simplify and allow maximum speed: ReplaceWithRegister.
This plugin offers a two-in-one gr command that replaces text covered by a {motion} / text object, entire line(s) or the current selection with the contents of a register; the old text is deleted into the black-hole register, i.e. it's gone. It transparently handles many corner cases and allows for a quick repeat via the standard . command. Should you not like it, its page has links to alternatives.
It's not particularly pretty, but here goes:
Go to line one and yi"
Move to line two
Type "_di"hp
That deletes what's in the quotes, but sends the deleted text to a black hole register. Then it moves the cursor back one, and pastes what you yanked from line one.
All in all, you can start on the first line and type yi"j"_di"hp. Why is it that people find vim intimidating? ;)
Alternatively, yank the first line as normal, then drop to line two and type ci"<Ctrl+p> and select the previously yanked text from the menu.
Excerpt from my .vimrc:
" Delete to 'black hole' register
nnoremap <leader>d "_d
vnoremap <leader>d "_d
So, you just need to \di"P as your last step (assuming you use \ as a <leader>).
There is a plugin that addresses this problem precisely. It was presumably born out of the same feeling you're feeling, namely that Visual mode often feels less than ideal to advanced Vim users.
operator-replace – Operator to replace text with register content
With operator-replace installed the replacing goes like this.
Yank the word inside the quotes.
yi"
Move to the target line
j
Replace inside the quotes with the yanked text. (I've set up gr as the replace operator: :map gr <Plug>(operator-replace). Pick your own mapping.)
gri"
Check it out! This is part of the truly excellent textobj/operator frameworks. I couldn't work without them.
How do you select a single line in VIM, when your cursor as at some random point along that line?
I know you can do (v, $) to get to the end of the line, or (v, ^) to get to the start, but when you do (v,$,^) it logically doesn't select the whole line, it selects from cursor, until end, then switches it to cursor until beginning... So this approach fails of course.
Capital V selects the current line in one key stroke; two, if you include the "shift" in shift+v.
V would be direct answer. However, I rarely need to do this because "selecting the current line" is generally part of a larger task. Example of such tasks includes copying the line and deleting the line. There's generally a better way to accomplish the task as a whole. The following are some of the tasks I can think of:
copy the line: yy
delete the line: dd
indent the line: >> or <<
select the current paragraph: vap or vip
delete from the current line to the end of the file 0dG
highlight the current line to see where my cursor is: use :set cursorline in .vimrc file
One case in which I do use V is to select multiple lines that are not a paragraph or some other text object. In this case, there's a tip that might be useful for you: once in the selection mode, you can use o to jump the cursor between the start and the end of the selection.
While this might be more keystrokes.
If you are already in visual mode you can use o to go to the other end of the visual selection.
So you can type
v0o$
To select the whole line. Take a look at :h visual-change
However from the comments it seems you just want to copy the whole line.
Which would just be yy
Just change your order of operations. You almost have it.
^,v,$
Or as suggested by #Kent: because ^ goes to the first non-empty char, if the line has leading spaces:
0,v,$
I know this thread is super old, but I just had the same question. This thread came up first, but I found a different answer than any found here. Use 'V' to select whole lines. That easy. One character to select the whole current line.