I figured out that :23y will yank the entire 23rd line.
But what I want to do is yank only the first word on line 23.
I tried :23yw, but that does not work. Is there an easy way to do this?
Can this be done without going to the line first and then yanking and then typing ` to go back to the line I was editing on?
23ggyw will do it. I don't think there's a quicker way.
Explanation: 23gg moves the cursor to line 23, yw yanks one word.
Note that this only works if you have the startofline option set (which is the default). Otherwise you need to explicitly move to to the first non-whitespace character: 23gg^yw.
The :y is an abbreviation of the :yank Ex command, that's why :yw does not work; it's a normal mode command. As the other answers have already shown, you can trigger those from the command line via :normal yw.
I'm afraid there's no way avoiding the jump in a practical way (but, as mentioned, <C-O> lets you jump back to the original position). You could use Vimscript:
:let #" = matchstr(getline(23), '^\w\+')
But that's hardly easier to type, and only suitable for a function.
I don't think there's a way to do that without moving the cursor.
Anyway, here is another way to do it:
:23norm! yw
Breakdown:
: because we are using an Ex command,
23 is the line on which we want to do something, it is a range of 1,
norm[al] executes a normal mode command on the given range,
yw yanks the first word.
Add <C-o> to go back to where you come from.
type 23Gyw in normal mode should do the job.
G Goto line [count], default last line, on the first
non-blank character |linewise|. If 'startofline' not
set, keep the same column.
G is a one of |jump-motions|.
Following would work without moving the cursor as requested but it's a hassle to type.
:23y|norm PJ0eld$
or you could try working out something with
:23t.|norm eld$
23jyw should be able to do it, it will take you to 23rd line and yank first word
Related
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.
in VIM, I understand that we can do a yank till the end of line using y$ but if e.g. my text is abcdefg and my cursor is at 'g' and I enter y^ the line will be copy without the g. My idea is to copy the whole line without the line break, any similar action will do.
0y$$ - copy the line without line break and move cursor back to the end
Making it a visual selection and then yanking that includes the character under the cursor:
v0y
If all the characters are indeed together and conform to a "vim sentence", you could use visual selection for the sentence object. A sentence in this case would match abcdefg even if that is not starting at the beginning of a line and it will not include the line ending:
visy
If you want to include trailing whitespace you would use a instead of i (mnemonic for "inside"):
vasy
The only problem with this approach (which may be what you do not want) is that it will not include leading whitespace. So if you have something like:
abcdefg
The selection will not include the leading chunk of whitespace, just abcdefg.
Turns out yanking till end of line is a thing you'll find yourself doing quite often. As such, the following mapping is quite popular.
noremap Y y$
It's so popular, it's even listed under :h Y!
If you use this mapping, the answer to your question would be 0Y
0yg_
is another option.
But visual mode is better:
v0y
v^y
Say I open a file in vim. I start on line 1 column 1 and hold down j until I am on line 14. Pressing :7CR puts me on line 7. I press yy to "yank".
How do I return to line 14? Using CTRL + o takes me back to the top of the file. ` ` gives me the same results.
You can type 7G to jump to line#7, then type Ctrl-o to jump back.
:set showcmd to show what you have typed at the right bottom.
To yank line#7 (No cursor moving):
:7y
To paste line#7 below line#14:
:7t14
<C-o> and <C-i> allow you to go down and up the jumplist. They work with "jump" commands but not with jjjjjjjjjjj.
To take advantage of this feature — and save a lot of time and keypresses in the process — I'd advise you to get into the habit of using better ways to navigate through your code : /?^$fFtTbBeEwW{} and so on.
And yes, use marks.
One more way: To jump back to another line, you can use ''. This works similar to an automatic mark, which is set for certain jump movements.
Why not set a mark using ma for example, and then return to it later using `a or 'a?
Mark the line you were originally on using ma, then 'a to return there.
If you want to return to a previous location, first you have to mark that location using the mark (m) command, followed by any letter a-z or A-Z, like ma to mark a location as 'a'.
To return to that location you would enter `a.
In Vim, when I run a substitution command like
:%s/foo/bar/g
it replaces all occurrences of foo with bar in the entire buffer. When it completes, the cursor moves to the last location where foo was replaced with bar.
How can I run :%s/foo/bar/g without having the cursor leave its original location where it was before the substitution command was issued?
Is there some option I can set in the .vimrc file?
When the :substitute command is run, prior to any replacements being
carried out, the current position of the cursor is stored in the jump
list (see :help jumplist).
In order to return to the position before the latest jump, one can use
the `` or '' Normal-mode commands. The former
jumps exactly to the stored position; the latter jumps to the first
non-whitespace character on the line the stored position belongs to.
It is possible to both invoke a substitution command and move
the cursor back afterwards, at once, by issuing the command
:%s/pat/str/g|norm!``
or, if jumping to the containing line is sufficient, by using
the command
:%s/pat/str/g|''
It is not necessary to preface '' with norm! in the latter
command, because the '' address is allowed by the range syntax
of Ex commands and refers to the same line the Normal-mode
command '' jumps to (see :help :range); both just look into
the contents of the ' psudo-mark.
I just type Ctrl+O after the replace to get back to the previous location.
It's old, but for anyone coming across this question, I wanted to share my solution since it will work correctly even if nothing is substituted:
:exe 'norm m`' | %s/pattern/substitution/eg | norm g``
exe is needed since norm treats the bar as an argument.
Programming in vim I often go search for something, yank it, then go back to where I was, insert it, modify it.
The problem is that after I search and find, I need to MANUALLY find my way back to where I was.
Is there an automatic way to go back to where I was when I initiated my last search?
Ctrl+O takes me to the previous location. Don't know about location before the search.
Edit: Also, `. will take you to the last change you made.
Use `` to jump back to the exact position you were in before you searched/jumped, or '' to jump back to the start of the line you were on before you searched/jumped.
I've always done by it setting a mark.
In command-mode, press m[letter]. For example, ma sets a mark at the current line using a as the mark identifier.
To get back to the mark press ' [letter]. For example, 'a takes you back to the line mark set in step 1. To get back to the column position of the row where you marked the line, use `a (back-tick [letter]).
To see all of the marks that currently set, type :marks.
On a slightly unrelated note, I just discovered another nifty thing about marks.
Let's say you jump to mark b by doing mb. Vim automatically sets the mark ' (that's a single-quote) to be whichever line you were on before jumping to mark b.
That means you can do 'b to jump to that mark, then do '' (2 single-quotes) to jump back to wherever you were before.
I discovered this accidentally using the :marks command, which shows a list of all marks.
You really should read :help jumplist it explains all of this very well.
CTRL+O and CTRL+I, for jumping back and forward.
I use this one:
nnoremap / ms/
nnoremap ? ms?
Then if I search something by using / or ?, I can go back quickly by `s. You could replace the letter s to any letter you like.
The simplest way is to set a mark, with m[letter], then go back to it with '[letter]