Vim yanking range of lines

user_245837 0
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I'm a C# developer who has just recently decided to expand my knowledge of the tools available to me. The first tool I've decided to learn is Vi/Vim. Everything has been going well so far, but there are a couple of questions I can't seem to find the answer to:

  1. Lets say I wanted to yank a range of lines. I know there are many ways of doing so, but I would like to do it by line number. I figured it would be similar to how the substitute commands work, something like 81,91y. Is there a way to do this?

  2. I'm a little confused about the g command in normal mode. It seems to do a myriad of things and I can't really determine what the g command does at its core. I'm confused on whether or not it's a motion command or a kind of "catch all" for other commands ran through normal mode. Can someone please explain this or point me to a reference that gives a good explanation of the g command?

yank range vi vim editor
10 Answers

Yank lines 81-91

:81,91y<enter>

If your fingers don't like to find the : and , keys, this would work as well (go to line 81, yank 11 lines)

81gg11yy

My only use of g is 5gg. To go to the 5th line. 22gg: 22nd line. As jimbo said, it's really only a modifier for some other commands.

For completeness, (http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Power_of_g) explains a lot of how g works in command mode.

hometoast_20090

g doesn't do anything by itself. It's one of a couple meta-commands that holds a bunch of sorta-unrelated commands.

z is yet another command like that.

user_355890

In addition to :91,96y a which yanks (y) lines 91 through 96 into register a, (pasted with "ap), the yanked lines can be appended to the register with:

:91,96y A

I.e. the capitalization of the A register causes an appending operation into register a instead of an overwrite. Capitalization of the register always works like this, e.g. :let @A=';' appends a ; to register a.

Using plus (+) or minus (-) references lines relative to the current cursor position:

:-10,+10y b

I.e. it would yank(y) 21 lines around the current cursor position and put them in register b.

An absence of input actually represents the current cursor position as well, which means that this:

:-5,y a

would yank the text from 5 lines above to current cursor position into named buffer a, and:

:,+5y a

would yank the 5 lines after the current cursor position into buffer a.

Note: If you have a macro in buffer a it was just overwritten by the previous yank, as yank registers and macro registers are really the same thing. Which is why, coincidentally, you can paste a macro, edit it, and then yank it back into it's register. I personally use letters reached by my left hand for yanks, and letters reached by my right hand for macros.

Moving blocks of text around, looks like this:

:+10,+13m.

which means move the four lines positioned 10 lines ahead of current cursor, to below the current line.

Addendum

I previously confused ya in :91,95ya a to be somehow synonymous with ya{motion} where the motion was supplied by 91,95. This was incorrect and the "a" in ya is completely unnecessary. In my defense, my help yank does not convey that ya is a possible alias of yank.

user_50578050

The best solution would be to enter "visual mode", by pressing v. And after selecting lines just copy them by pressing y. Then paste copied lines by pressing p.

user_75621470

Vim's :help index describes g as:

|g|             g{char}            extended commands, see |g| below

Scroll down (or :help g) for a list.

user_2428890

As a long time Vi/Vim user I tend to use 'marks' instead of line numbers (or 'line markers'). It works like this: m is the 'mark' character; then use any letter to identify/name the mark. To return to a mark preface the named mark with a single quote ( 'a)These marks can be used as the range. Examples:

File:
    <line 1>
    <line 2>
    <line 3>
    <line 4>
    <line 5>

When in command mode move cursor to line 2, typema. scroll to line 4, typemb. To yank from mark a to mark b type:

    :'a,'byank

To delete from mark a to mark b type:

    :'a,'bdel

To search from mark a to mark b and replace 'ine' with 'ink':

    :'a,'bs/ine/ink/g

To copy mark a through mark b and paste below the current position (the 'dot' always references the line where the cursor currently is positioned):

    :'a,'bco .

Shift lines of code, between mark a through mark b, one tab to the right (use opposite chevron, <, to move left):

    :'a,'b>

In command mode you can move back to marks by simply typing 'a to move back to the line marked a. Typing '' moves you back to previous position (unfortuantely only remembers the previous position, not two back).

You can yank to named buffers, copy, delete lines, search&replace just portions of your code, etc. without needing to know the line numbers.

user_59482630

To yank lines from line number 81 to 91 :

approach 1: 81gg11yy

not bad but you have to do little bit of math to find out how many lines to yank

approach 2: 81gg then shift+v then 91gg then y

BEST IN MY OPINION because this is straight forward, you only have to know the obvious thing i.e from which line number to which line number you want to yank

user_101469010
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