Copying and Moving Sections of Text

See also VIM visual blocks

Copying and Moving sections of text

Moving text involves a number of commands all combined to achieve the end result. This section will introduce named and unnamed buffers along with the commands which cut and paste the text.

Coping text involves three main steps.

1. Yanking (copying) the text to a buffer.
2. Moving the cursor to the destination location.
3. Pasting (putting) the text to the edit buffer.

To Yank text to the unnamed use [y] command.

        yy          Move a copy of the current line to the unnamed buffer.
        Y           Move a copy of the current line to the unnamed buffer.
        nyy         Move the next n lines to the unnamed buffer
        nY          Move the next n lines to the unnamed buffer
        yw          Move a word to the unnamed buffer.
        ynw         Move n words to the unnamed buffer.
        nyw         Move n words to the unnamed buffer.
        y$          Move the current position to the end of the line.

The unnamed buffer is a temporary buffer that is easily corrupted by other common commands. On occasions the text may be needed for a long period of time. In this case the named buffers would be used. vi has 26 named buffers. The buffers use the letters of the alphabet as the identification name. To distinguish the difference between a command or a named buffer, vi uses the ["] character. When using a named buffer by the lowercase letter the contents are over written while the uppercase version appends to the current contents.

        "ayy        Move current line to named buffer a.
        "aY         Move current line to named buffer a.
        "byw        Move current word to named buffer b.
        "Byw        Append the word the contents of the named buffer b.
        "by3w       Move the next 3 words to named buffer b.

Use the [p] command to paste the contents of the cut buffer to the edit buffer.

        p           Paste from the unnamed buffer to the RIGHT of the cursor
        P           Paste from the unnamed buffer to the LEFT of the cursor
        nP          Paste n copies of the unnamed buffer to the LEFT of the cursor
        "ap         Paste from the named buffer a RIGHT of the cursor.
        "b3P        Paste 3 copies from the named buffer b LEFT of the cursor.

When using vi within an xterm you have one more option for copying text. Highlight the section of text you wish to copy by dragging the mouse cursor over text. Holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse from the start to the finish will invert the text. This automatically places the text into a buffer reserved by the X server. To paste the text press the middle button. Remember the put vi into insert mode as the input could be interpreted as commands and the result will be unknown. Using the same technique a single word can be copied by double clicking the left mouse button over the word. Just the single word will be copied. Pasting is the same as above. The buffer contents will only change when a new highlighted area is created.

Moving the text has three steps.

1. Delete text to a named or unnamed buffer.
2. Moving the cursor the to destination location.
3. Pasting the named or unnamed buffer.

The process is the same as copying with the change on step one to delete. When the command [dd] is performed the line is deleted and placed into the unnamed buffer. You can then paste the contents just as you had when copying the text into the desired position.  

         "add       Delete the line and place it into named buffer a.
         "a4dd      Delete 4 lines and place into named buffer a.
         dw         Delete a word and place into unnamed buffer

See the section on modifying text for more examples of deleting text.

On the event of a system crash the named and unnamed buffer contents are lost but the edit buffers content can be recovered (See Useful commands).

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20181022* move selection to a separate file ( Oct 22, 2018 , superuser.com ) [Recommended]
• 20181021 : Common visual block selection scenarios ( Oct 21, 2018 , stackoverflow.com )
• 20181021 : Vim cheatcheet ( Vim cheatcheet, )

Old News ;-)

[Oct 22, 2018] move selection to a separate file

Highly recommended!

Oct 22, 2018 | superuser.com

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 13:29

With vim, how can I move a piece of text to a new file? For the moment, I do this:

• select the text
• use :w new_file
• select the text again
• delete the text

Is there a more efficient way to do this?

Before

a.txt

sometext
some other text
some other other text
end

After

a.txt

sometext
end

b.txt

some other text
some other other text

Ingo Karkat, Jan 23, 2013 at 15:20

How about these custom commands:

:command! -bang -range -nargs=1 -complete=file MoveWrite  <line1>,<line2>write<bang> <args> | <line1>,<line2>delete _
:command! -bang -range -nargs=1 -complete=file MoveAppend <line1>,<line2>write<bang> >> <args> | <line1>,<line2>delete _

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 15:27

This is very ugly, but hey, it seems to do in one step exactly what I asked for (I tried). +1, and accepted. I was looking for a native way to do this quickly but since there does not seem to be one, yours will do just fine. Thanks! – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 15:27

Ingo Karkat ,Jan 23, 2013 at 16:15

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find this pretty elegant; you only need to type it once (into your .vimrc). – Ingo Karkat Jan 23 '13 at 16:15

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 16:21

You're right, "very ugly" shoud have been "very unfamiliar". Your command is very handy, and I think I definitely going to carve it in my .vimrc – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 16:21

embedded.kyle ,Jan 23, 2013 at 14:08

By "move a piece of text to a new file" I assume you mean cut that piece of text from the current file and create a new file containing only that text.

Various examples:

• :1,1 w new_file to create a new file containing only the text from line number 1
• :5,50 w newfile to create a new file containing the text from line 5 to line 50
• :'a,'b w newfile to create a new file containing the text from mark a to mark b
  • set your marks by using ma and mb where ever you like

The above only copies the text and creates a new file containing that text. You will then need to delete afterward.

This can be done using the same range and the d command:

• :5,50 d to delete the text from line 5 to line 50
• :'a,'b d to delete the text from mark a to mark b

Or by using dd for the single line case.

If you instead select the text using visual mode, and then hit : while the text is selected, you will see the following on the command line:

:'<,'>

Which indicates the selected text. You can then expand the command to:

:'<,'>w >> old_file

Which will append the text to an existing file. Then delete as above.

---

One liner:

:2,3 d | new +put! "

The breakdown:

• :2,3 d - delete lines 2 through 3
• | - technically this redirects the output of the first command to the second command but since the first command doesn't output anything, we're just chaining the commands together
• new - opens a new buffer
• +put! " - put the contents of the unnamed register ( " ) into the buffer
  • The bang ( ! ) is there so that the contents are put before the current line. This causes and empty line at the end of the file. Without it, there is an empty line at the top of the file.

greg0ire, Jan 23, 2013 at 14:09

Your assumption is right. This looks good, I'm going to test. Could you explain 2. a bit more? I'm not very familiar with ranges. EDIT: If I try this on the second line, it writes the first line to the other file, not the second line. – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 14:09

embedded.kyle ,Jan 23, 2013 at 14:16

@greg0ire I got that a bit backward, I'll edit to better explain – embedded.kyle Jan 23 '13 at 14:16

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 14:18

I added an example to make my question clearer. – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 14:18

embedded.kyle ,Jan 23, 2013 at 14:22

@greg0ire I corrected my answer. It's still two steps. The first copies and writes. The second deletes. – embedded.kyle Jan 23 '13 at 14:22

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 14:41

Ok, if I understand well, the trick is to use ranges to select and write in the same command. That's very similar to what I did. +1 for the detailed explanation, but I don't think this is more efficient, since the trick with hitting ':' is what I do for the moment. – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 14:41

Xyon ,Jan 23, 2013 at 13:32

Select the text in visual mode, then press y to "yank" it into the buffer (copy) or d to "delete" it into the buffer (cut).

Then you can :split <new file name> to split your vim window up, and press p to paste in the yanked text. Write the file as normal.

To close the split again, pass the split you want to close :q .

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 13:42

I have 4 steps for the moment: select, write, select, delete. With your method, I have 6 steps: select, delete, split, paste, write, close. I asked for something more efficient :P – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 13:42

Xyon ,Jan 23, 2013 at 13:44

Well, if you pass the split :x instead, you can combine writing and closing into one and make it five steps. :P – Xyon Jan 23 '13 at 13:44

greg0ire ,Jan 23, 2013 at 13:46

That's better, but 5 still > 4 :P – greg0ire Jan 23 '13 at 13:46 Based on @embedded.kyle's answer and this Q&A , I ended up with this one liner to append a selection to a file and delete from current file. After selecting some lines with Shift+V , hit : and run:

'<,'>w >> test | normal gvd

The first part appends selected lines. The second command enters normal mode and runs gvd to select the last selection and then deletes.

[Oct 21, 2018] Common visual block selection scenarios

Notable quotes:

"... column oriented ..."

Oct 21, 2018 | stackoverflow.com

You are talking about text selecting and copying, I think that you should give a look to the Vim Visual Mode .

In the visual mode, you are able to select text using Vim commands, then you can do whatever you want with the selection.

Consider the following common scenarios:

You need to select to the next matching parenthesis.

You could do:

• v% if the cursor is on the starting/ending parenthesis
• vib if the cursor is inside the parenthesis block

You want to select text between quotes:

• vi" for double quotes
• vi' for single quotes

You want to select a curly brace block (very common on C-style languages):

• viB
• vi{

You want to select the entire file:

• ggVG

Visual block selection is another really useful feature, it allows you to select a rectangular area of text, you just have to press Ctrl - V to start it, and then select the text block you want and perform any type of operation such as yank, delete, paste, edit, etc. It's great to edit column oriented text.

Vim cheatcheet.

Marking text (visual mode)

• v - start visual mode, mark lines, then do command (such as y-yank)
• V - start Linewise visual mode
• o - move to other end of marked area
• Ctrl+v - start visual block mode
• O - move to Other corner of block
• aw - mark a word
• ab - a () block (with braces)
• aB - a {} block (with brackets)
• ib - inner () block
• iB - inner {} block
• Esc - exit visual mode

Visual commands

• > - shift right
• < - shift left
• y - yank (copy) marked text
• d - delete marked text
• ~ - switch case

Cut and Paste

• yy - yank (copy) a line
• 2yy - yank 2 lines
• yw - yank word
• y$ - yank to end of line
• p - put (paste) the clipboard after cursor
• P - put (paste) before cursor
• dd - delete (cut) a line
• dw - delete (cut) the current word
• x - delete (cut) current character

typing : would add the block to ex command line and low you touse ex commans with the block inclide mo command is :'<,'> mo 15. This means move visual blok toposition after line 15. the target can be bookmark

:'<,'> mo mark a

Using registers to moving blocks

"<letter>y

7 uu Making it even quicker:
6
5 If •+y and "+p are too many keypresses, we can easily remap
4 the copy and paste commands.
3
2
1 vnoremap <C-c> "+y
map <C-fc "+p
1 ...
2
3 You might want to consider using P instead of p.
4
5 For copying to both the clipboard and primary selection.
6
7 ... ... ...
8 vnoremap <C-c> "*y :let @+=@**<CR>
9
0

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