As a novice vim user, I used d[count]<Enter> to delete lines.
It striked me as odd that there were always count+1 lines deleted.
If I wanted to delete 2 lines, I typed d1, 3 lines took d2, ...
I finally took the time trying to understand why and it appears I should have been using :d<count>.
That does beg for the question though, why is :d1<Enter> <> d1<Enter>
d<count> in normal mode doesn't do anything, because the count isn't followed by a motion. So presumably you've been hitting d<count><Enter>, in which case the motion associated with d is <count><Enter>, which moves <count> lines downward. Since <Enter> is a linewise motion, the d will also be linewise, deleting all lines from the current one to the line <count> downward, inclusive.
The command you actually wanted is <count>dd.
d{motion} deletes the text that {motion} moves over. When you type 3<ENTER>, the cursor moves 3 lines below the current and therefore d3<ENTER> deletes that area.
:d[count] simply deletes [count] lines.
The difference is that {motion} is not the same as count.
To get around that, you could use the visual mode and select what you're going to delete and then simply press d.
Related
I'm trying to learn VI/VIM. I would like to know how to deleted the text from my cursor to some other spot in the file. I know how to delete a line (dd) and multiple lines (5dd) and to the end of a line (d$), but not, for example, from the cursor to the middle of the next line or the middle of the next two or three lines.
Thanks for any tips.
Cheers!
You can use any motion after a d. For example, to delete two words, you can do d2w. Or to delete 10 characters to the left, you can do d10h, or to delete next two lines, do d2j. For something more complicated like 'delete up to middle of next line', I usually just do v to go into selection mode, select what I need with hjkl, and hit d to delete it. If you do block selection mode Ctrl+v you can select a block that needs deletion and hit d. Hope that helps.
What do you mean "the middle"?
You delete with d{motion}, and that includes things like:
d5w - delete the next 5 words
d/test - delete up to the word test
see
:help d
:help motion
and the motion.txt linked in the help (also online http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html )
I used to have vi macros to delete between marks. e.g. use ma to make mark a, and then put your cursor where you want it and:
mb'a"ad'b will make mark b and delete from mark a to b into buffer 'a'
mb'a"ay'b will copy (not delete)
"ap will get the text back.
(from memory this is whole line based, not "position on a line")
If I understand correctly both commands cut 10 lines and allow you to paste them anywhere.
Are they both the same as (n-1)dd and dn+enter where n is the number of lines to be cut?
The two relevant help section are copied below.
d
["x]d{motion} Delete text that {motion} moves over [into register
x]. See below for exceptions.
dd
["x]dd Delete [count] lines [into register x] linewise.
10dd is the second one which deletes 10 lines from you current position.
d9 does nothing. d9j (or d9<CR>) is delete from the cursor to where the cursor ends up (which is9j) is nine lines below the current one. However the j or <CR> makes it linewise so the same thing is deleted.
Both of these commands delete 10 lines. so ndd is equivalent to d(n-1)j.
d9j might be easier to type than 10dd if you have set relativenumber turned on because the difference between the line you are on and the line you want to delete to are on the left hand side of your screen.
You can use d9k to delete 10 lines up from your cursor line which you can't do with dd. Or you can use dfa to delete upto and including the next a. d{motion} is more powerful than dd because it isn't restricted to only linewise deletions.
Which one you use is up to you but certain combinations are easier depending on where your cursor is.
Vim noob here. I am trying to select multiple lines of code to copy and paste in other areas. Is there a way to do this without using the mouse?
A few other ways that don't use visual mode at all:
using marks
leave a mark somewhere with ma
move somewhere else
yank from here to there with y'a
using search motions
localize some unique token at the end of the part you want to yank
yank from here to there with y/foo<cr> (forward search) or y?bar<cr> (backward search)
using text-objects
determine what text-object would map to what you want to yank:
inner/outer word, iw/aw
inner/outer pair, i'"([{</a'"([{<
inner/outer html tag, it/at
sentence, s
paragraph, p
"block", ]
…
yank that text-object with, say, yip
using other motions
yank to end of function: y]}
yank to end of file: yG
all of the above solutions with visual mode
V'ay
V/foo<cr>y
V?bar<cr>y
Vipy, etc.
V]}y
VGy
:h motion.txt will hopefully blow your mind, like it did to mine.
You can place your cursor in the first line you want to copy and then type nyy where n is the number of lines you want to copy. For example, type 2yy to copy the two lines under the cursor.
Then, you can paste them using p.
You can also select multiple lines by placing your cursor somewhere and keeping Shift pressed. Move your cursor to the end of the desired selection and stop pressing Shift. Then copy using just y (and not yy) and paste with p.
Yep, in normal mode type V[direction] and you will highlight multiple lines. If you don't want whole lines, use v instead of V. To copy it, hit y and move to the area which you want to paste in and hit p. To delete it, instead of y use x.
Alternatively, you can simply use [number of lines]yy to yank some number of lines or [number of lines]dd to cut some number of lines. In this case pasting is the same.
I'm running vim 7.3 on a Mac 10.7.2 and I'm having some trouble cutting and pasting several lines.
On my old Linux setup (which was stolen so I don't know versions), I could type "dd" multiple times and then "p" would yank all of them back. For example: type: "dd dd" and two lines would be deleted. Now type "p" and both lines are pasted back into the buffer.
I know I can accomplish what I want by typing "2dd", and then "p" - but I would like to be able to "dd"-out lines without counting the number of lines ahead of time.
Any ideas?
Have you considered using visual mode?
You could just go:
Press V
Select everything you want to cut without counting
Press d
Go to where you want to paste
Press p
This should yield approximately half as many keystrokes as the dd method since you press one key per line rather than two. Bonus points if you use 5j (or similar) to select multiple lines at a time.
You could type:
d<n>d
where <n> is the number of lines that you want to cut, and then you could paste them with:
p
For example, to cut and paste 3 lines:
d3d
p
To cut and paste by line numbers (do :set number to see the line numbers), for lines x to y do:
:x,yd
or if your cursor is already on line x, do
:,yd
Then go to where you want to paste and press p
Not sure if this is close enough to what you're trying, but one thing you could do is use a specific register, and capitalize your register name. That tells vim to append to the register rather than replace it, so if you have the lines:
one
two
three
you can enter
"qdd
"Qdd
"Qdd
and then subsequently if you enter
"qp
it will paste back the original lines
To copy and paste 4 lines:
y4y (with the cursor on the starting line you wanna copy)
p (with cursor on the line you wanna paste after)
I agree with #Ben S. that this is the preferred way to accomplish this but if you are just looking to replicate your old behavior you can remap dd to append to a specified register, and then map p to paste from that register and clear it.
This will have the disadvantage of causing p to only work with things deleted using dd (using d} to delete to the end of the paragraph would not put the text in the correct register to be pasted later).
Add the following to your vimrc
noremap dd "Ddd "Appends the contents of the current line into register d
noremap p "dp:let #d=""<CR> "Pastes from register d and then clears it out
if you don't want pasting to clear out the contents of the register
noremap p "dp "Paste from register d
but this will cause that register to grow without ever clearing it out
Suppose I have the piece of text below with the cursor staying at the first A currently,
AAAA
BBB
CC
D
How can I add spaces in front of each line to make it like, and it would be great if the number of columns of spaces can be specified on-the-fly, e.g., two here.
AAAA
BBB
CC
D
I would imagine there is a way to do it quickly in visual mode, but any ideas?
Currently I'm copying the first column of text in visual mode twice, and replace the entire two column to spaces, which involves > 5 keystrokes, too cumbersome.
Constraint:
Sorry that I didn't state the question clearly and might create some confusions.
The target is only part of a larger file, so it would be great if the number of rows and columns starting from the first A can be specified.
Edit:
Thank both #DeepYellow and #Johnsyweb, apparently >} and >ap are all great tips that I was not aware of, and they both could be valid answers before I clarified on the specific requirement for the answer to my question, but in any case, #luser droog 's answer stands out as the only viable answer. Thank you everyone!
I'd use :%s/^/ /
You could also specify a range of lines :10,15s/^/ /
Or a relative range :.,+5s/^/ /
Or use regular expressions for the locations :/A/,/D/>.
For copying code to paste on SO, I usually use sed from the terminal sed 's/^/ /' filename
Shortcut
I just learned a new trick for this. You enter visual mode v, select the region (with regular movement commands), then hit : which gives you this:
:'<,'>
ready for you to type just the command part of the above commands, the marks '< and '> being automatically set to the bounds of the visual selection.
To select and indent the current paragraph:
vip>
or
vip:>
followed by enter.
Edit:
As requested in the comments, you can also add spaces to the middle of a line using a regex quantifier \{n} on the any meta-character ..
:%s/^.\{14}/& /
This adds a space 14 chars from the left on each line. Of course % could be replaced by any of the above options for specifying the range of an ex command.
When on the first A, I'd go in block visual mode ctrl-v, select the lines you want to modify, press I (insert mode with capital i), and apply any changes I want for the first line. Leaving visual mode esc will apply all changes on the first line to all lines.
Probably not the most efficient on number of key-strokes, but gives you all the freedom you want before leaving visual mode. I don't like it when I have to specify by hand the line and column range in a regex command.
I'd use >}.
Where...
>: Shifts right and
}: means until the end of the paragraph
Hope this helps.
Ctrl + v (to enter in visual mode)
Use the arrow keys to select the lines
Shift + i (takes you to insert mode)
Hit space keys or whatever you want to type in front of the selected lines.
Save the changes (Use :w) and now you will see the changes in all the selected lines.
I would do like Nigu. Another solution is to use :normal:
<S-v> to enter VISUAL-LINE mode
3j or jjj or /D<CR> to select the lines
:norm I<Space><Space>, the correct range ('<,'>) being inserted automatically
:normal is probably a bit overkill for this specific case but sometimes you may want to perform a bunch of complex operations on a range of lines.
You can select the lines in visual mode, and type >. This assumes that you've set your tabs up to insert spaces, e.g.:
setl expandtab
setl shiftwidth=4
setl tabstop=4
(replace 4 with your preference in indentation)
If the lines form a paragraph, >ap in normal mode will shift the whole paragraph above and below the current position.
Let's assume you want to shift a block of code:
setup the count of spaces used by each shift command, :set shiftwidth=1, default is 8.
press Ctrl+v in appropriate place and move cursor up k or down j to select some area.
press > to shift the block and . to repeat the action until desired position (if cursor is missed, turn back with h or b).
Another thing you could try is a macro. If you do not know already, you start a macro with q and select the register to save the macro... so to save your macro in register a you would type qa in normal mode.
At the bottom there should be something that says recording. Now just do your movement as you would like.
So in this case you wanted 2 spaces in front of every line, so with your cursor already at the beginning of the first line, go into insert mode, and hit space twice. Now hit escape to go to normal mode, then down to the next line, then to the beginning of that line, and press q. This ends and saves the macro
(so that it is all in one place, this is the full list of key combinations you would do, where <esc> is when you press the escape key, and <space> is where you hit the space bar: qai<space><space><esc>j0q This saves the macro in register a )
Now to play the macro back you do # followed by the register you saved it in... so in this example #a. Now the second line will also have 2 spaces in front of them.
Macros can also run multiple times, so if I did 3#a the macro would run 3 times, and you would be done with this.
I like using macros for this like this because it is more intuitive to me, because I can do exactly what I want it to do, and just replay it multiple times.
I was looking for similar solution, and use this variation
VG:norm[N]I
N = numbers of spaces to insert.
V=Crtl-V
*** Notice *** put space immediate after I.