Using VIM visual blocks

Visual selection is a common feature in applications, but Vim's visual selection has several benefits.

To cut-and-paste or copy-and-paste:

1. Position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to cut/copy.
2. Press v  to begin character-based visual selection, or V  to select whole lines, or Ctrl-v or Ctrl-q to select a block.
3. Move the cursor to the end of the text to be cut/copied. While selecting text, you can perform searches and other advanced movement.
4. Press d  (delete) to cut, or y  (yank) to copy. You can yank to any of 24 named 
5. Move the cursor to the desired paste location.
6. Press p  to paste after the cursor, or P  to paste before.

Visual selection (steps 1-3) can be performed using a mouse.

If you want to change the selected text, press c  instead of d  or y  in step 4. In a visual selection, pressing c  performs a change by deleting the selected text and entering insert mode so you can type the new text.

Pasting over a block of text

You can copy a block of text by pressing Ctrl-v (or Ctrl-q if you use Ctrl-v for paste), then moving the cursor to select, and pressing y to yank. Now you can move elsewhere and press p to paste the text after the cursor (or P to paste before). The paste inserts a block (which might, for example, be 4 rows by 3 columns of text).

Instead of inserting the block, it is also possible to replace (paste over) the destination. To do this, move to the target location then press 1vp (1v selects an area equal to the original, and p pastes over it).

When a count is used before v, V, or ^V (character, line or block selection), an area equal to the previous area, multiplied by the count, is selected. See the paragraph after :help <LeftRelease>.

Note that this will only work if you actually did something to the previous visual selection, such as a yank, delete, or change operation. It will not work after visually selecting an area and leaving visual mode without taking any actions.

• Visual selection
• Copy, cut and paste

CommentsEdit

NOTE: after selecting the visual copy mode, you can hold the shift key while selection the region to get a multiple line copy. For example, to copy three lines, press V, then hold down the Shift key while pressing the down arrow key twice. Then do your action on the buffer.

I have struck out the above new comment because I think it is talking about something that may apply to those who have used :behave mswin. To visually select multiple lines, you type V, then press j (or cursor down). You hold down Shift only to type the uppercase V. Do not press Shift after that. If I am wrong, please explain here. JohnBeckett 10:48, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

If you just want to copy (yank) the visually marked text, you do not need to 'y'ank it. Marking it will already copy it.

Using a mouse, you can insert it at another position by clicking the middle mouse button.

This also works in across Vim applications on Windows systems (clipboard is inserted)

This is a really useful thing in Vim. I feel lost without it in any other editor. I have some more points I'd like to add to this tip:

• While in (any of the three) Visual mode(s), pressing 'o' will move the cursor to the opposite end of the selection. In Visual Block mode, you can also press 'O', allowing you to position the cursor in any of the four corners.
• If you have some yanked text, pressing 'p' or 'P' while in Visual mode will replace the selected text with the already yanked text. (After this, the previously selected text will be yanked.)
• Press 'gv' in Normal mode to restore your previous selection.
• It's really worth it to check out the register functionality in Vim: ':help registers'.
• If you're still eager to use the mouse-juggling middle-mouse trick of common unix copy-n-paste, or are into bending space and time with i_CTRL-R<reg>, consider checking out ':set paste' and ':set pastetoggle'. (Or in the latter case, try with i_CTRL-R_CTRL-O..)

You can replace a set of text in a visual block very easily by selecting a block, press c and then make changes to the first line. Pressing <Esc> twice replaces all the text of the original selection. See :help v_b_c.

On Windows the <mswin.vim> script seems to be getting sourced for many users.

Result: more Windows like behavior (ctrl-v is "paste", instead of visual-block selection). Hunt down your system vimrc and remove sourcing thereof if you don't like that behavior (or substitute <mrswin.vim> in its place, see VimTip63.

With VimTip588 one can sort lines or blocks based on visual-block selection.

With reference to the earlier post asking how to paste an inner block

1. Select the inner block to copy usint ctrl-v and highlighting with the hjkl keys
2. yank the visual region (y)
3. Select the inner block you want to overwrite (Ctrl-v then hightlight with hjkl keys)
4. paste the selection P (that is shift P) , this will overwrite keeping the block formation

The "yank" buffers in Vim are not the same as the Windows clipboard (i.e., cut-and-paste) buffers. If you're using the yank, it only puts it in a Vim buffer - that buffer is not accessible to the Windows paste command. You'll want to use the Edit | Copy and Edit | Paste (or their keyboard equivalents) if you're using the Windows GUI, or select with your mouse and use your X-Windows cut-n-paste mouse buttons if you're running UNIX.

Double-quote and star gives one access to windows clippboard or the unix equivalent. as an example if I wanted to yank the current line into the clipboard I would type "*yy

If I wanted to paste the contents of the clippboard into Vim at my current curser location I would type "*p

The double-qoute and start trick work well with visual mode as well. ex: visual select text to copy to clippboard and then type "*y

I find this very useful and I use it all the time but it is a bit slow typing "* all the time so I am thinking about creating a macro to speed it up a bit.

Copy and Paste using the System Clipboard

There are some caveats regarding how the "*y (copy into System Clipboard) command works. We have to be sure that we are using vim-full (sudo aptitude install vim-full on debian-based systems) or a Vim that has X11 support enabled. Only then will the "*y command work.

For our convenience as we are all familiar with using Ctrl+c to copy a block of text in most other GUI applications, we can also map Ctrl+c to "*y so that in Vim Visual Mode, we can simply Ctrl+c to copy the block of text we want into our system buffer. To do that, we simply add this line in our .vimrc file:

map <C-c> "+y<CR>

Restart our shell and we are good. Now whenever we are in Visual Mode, we can Ctrl+c to grab what we want and paste it into another application or another editor in a convenient and intuitive manner

Simple Example

The best way to understand this feature is by way of an example. Imagine you have the following content (also imagine, if you will, that this list is much longer, maybe a hundred lines or more in length):

_List Item 1
_List Item 2
_List Item 3
_List Item 4
_List Item 5

If you wanted to remove the _ (underscore) character that begins every line, you could fix this using VISUAL-BLOCK mode. (You could also use a substitution command, but that option has a more complex syntax, and so I'll cover it in another chapter.)

To begin with, we have to enter VISUAL-BLOCK mode. To do this, you will have to run <C-v> from NORMAL mode.

To implement the change we've described above (i.e., removing the underscores), we have to run the following sequence of commands:

gg<C-v>Gd

By now, you should be comfortable analyzing the construction of complex commands, but let's take a look at what this command does when we break it down into its component parts.

• gg: We move to the top of the buffer (just in case our cursor isn't already at the start of the first line).
• <C-v>: We enter into VISUAL-BLOCK mode (which selects the current character under the cursor).
• G: We move our cursor to the bottom line (which subsequently selects the first column in each line).
• d: We delete the selection.

Note A nice side effect of using a visual mode (whether it be a VISUAL-BLOCK or standard visual selection) is that you can filter content through an external terminal program, using the ! operator. We'll see more examples of this in Chapter 20.

Canceling

To escape from VISUAL-BLOCK mode, you will have to run the command <Esc>, which will take you back into NORMAL mode. But realize that if you have started to insert or append content across a selection, pressing <Esc> will still apply the changes you have started to make.

If you would prefer to not have the changes applied across all selected lines, you would instead have to run the command <C-c>, which will keep the changes you've made to the current line but not apply them automatically to any other selected lines.

Adding Additional Content in Block Format

As well as being able to select a rectangular area and execute operators upon that selection, you can also add additional content, which gets automatically applied across the multiple lines you have selected within VISUAL-BLOCK mode. To demonstrate this, let's look at the modified version of the previous "simple example" content we had (notice the underscore character has been removed from each line).

List Item 1
List Item 2
List Item 3
List Item 4
List Item 5

If we wanted to add an asterisk character (*) to the start of each line, we could do so very easily with VISUAL-BLOCK mode. First, we would have to enter VISUAL-BLOCK mode, make our selection, and then insert the content we wanted to be applied around that selection. The specific command would be as follows:

gg<C-v>4jI*<Esc>

Running that command would result in the content being changed to the following:

*List Item 1
*List Item 2
*List Item 3
*List Item 4
*List Item 5

Let's break down the command, so that we can see what we did and, in the process, learn how to inject new content that is automatically applied to a selection.

• gg: We move to the top of the buffer (just in case our cursor isn't already at the start of the first line).
• <C-v>: We enter into VISUAL-BLOCK mode (which selects the current character under the cursor).
• 4j: We move down four lines (subsequently selecting the first character on each line).
• I: We tell Vim we want to "block insert." This will allow us to enter new text that is inserted into each selected line (similar to the standard i and I operators when editing content, but specifically aimed at applying the edit to multiple lines inside VISUAL-BLOCK mode).
• *: This is the content we want to add. You'll notice that the content is only added to the current line. (You might have expected to see it added to all other selected lines at the same time as you were typing, but Vim doesn't do this, for performance reasons.)
• <Esc>: By pressing the escape key, we move back into NORMAL mode, and Vim will take the new content we added and apply it to the selection we had made within VISUAL-BLOCK mode. (Subsequently, our asterisk character is added to the start of each line.)

Note You can also use other commands, such as c, to change multiple lines, or s, to substitute the content across multiple lines, but remember that your change will only appear once you escape VISUAL-BLOCK mode.

End-of-Line Concerns

Interestingly, Vim's VISUAL-BLOCK mode is intelligent enough to know that when we want to insert some content (or apply a change) at the end of a line, that the end of the line will be different each time.

Imagine our content looks like the following:

pro javascript design patterns
practical clojure
beginning ruby
regular expression recipes
practical common lisp

If we wanted to add an exclamation point to the end of each line, using VISUAL-BLOCK mode, we would have to use the $ operator at some point during our command, to tell Vim to move to the end of the line. But as you can see, the end of the line is different for each line, as some book titles are longer than others.

Let's run the command that implements the solution: gg<C-v>$4jA!<Esc>. (Don't worry, we'll come back and explain this command in a moment.) Once we run this command, we'll see that the result has the following content (note that the exclamation marks [!] on each line aren't placed at the same point as the longest line but are placed perfectly at the relevant position for each line):

pro javascript design patterns!
practical clojure!
beginning ruby!
regular expression recipes!
practical common lisp!

So let's take a moment to quickly explain the command we ran. (You should have been able to analyze and figure it out yourself by now; if not, then I'd suggest going back and reading Chapter 5 on how to read and run commands in Vim.)

• gg: We move to the top of the buffer (just in case our cursor isn't already at the start of the first line).
• <C-v>: We enter into VISUAL-BLOCK mode (which selects the current character under the cursor).
• $: We move the selection to the end of the line (subsequently selecting the entire line).
• 4j: We move down four lines (subsequently selecting the entire file).
• A: We tell Vim we want to "block append." (Because we used the $ operator to move to the end of the line, the append will occur at the end of the line.)
• !: We type in the exclamation point.
• <Esc>: We escape VISUAL-BLOCK mode, so the change is then applied to all selected lines.

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, )
• 20181019 : Visual Mode ( Oct 19, 2018 , my.safaribooksonline.com )
• 20181019 : Vim faster way to select blocks of text in visual mode - Stack Overflow ( Oct 19, 2018 , stackoverflow.com )

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

[Oct 19, 2018] Visual Mode

Notable quotes:

"... Vim's Operator Commands ..."

Oct 19, 2018 | my.safaribooksonline.com

Vim's Visual mode allows us to define a selection of text and then operate upon it. This should feel pretty intuitive, since it is the model that most editing software follows. But Vim's take is characteristically different, so we'll start by making sure we grok Visual mode ( Tip 20 ).

Vim has three variants of Visual mode involving working with characters, lines, or rectangular blocks of text. We'll explore ways of switching between these modes as well as some useful tricks for modifying the bounds of a selection ( Tip 21 ).

We'll see that the dot command can be used to repeat Visual mode commands, but that it's especially effective when operating on line-wise regions. When working with character-wise selections, the dot command can sometimes fall short of our expectations. We'll see that in these scenarios, operator commands may be preferable.

Visual-Block mode is rather special in that it allows us to operate on rectangular columns of text. You'll find many uses for this feature, but we'll focus on three tips that demonstrate some of its capabilities.

Visual mode allows us to select a range of text and then operate upon it. However intuitive this might seem, Vim's perspective on selecting text is different from other text editors.

Suppose for a minute that we're not working with Vim but instead filling out a text area on a web page. We've written the word "March," but it should read "April," so using the mouse, we double-click the word to select it. Having highlighted the word, we could hit the backspace key to delete it and then type out the correct month as a replacement.

You probably already know that there's no need to hit the backspace key in this example. With the word "March" selected, we would only have to type the letter "A" and it would replace the selection, preparing the way so that we could type out the rest of the word "April." It's not much, but a keystroke saved is a keystroke earned.

If you expect this behavior to carry over to Vim's Visual mode, you're in for a surprise. The clue is right there in the name: Visual mode is just another mode, which means that each key performs a different function.

Many of the commands that you are familiar with from Normal mode work just the same in Visual mode. We can still use h , j , k , and l as cursor keys. We can use f{char} to jump to a character on the current line and then repeat or reverse the jump with the ; and , commands, respectively. We can even use the search command (and n / N ) to jump to pattern matches. Each time we move our cursor in Visual mode, we change the bounds of the selection.

Some Visual mode commands perform the same basic function as in Normal mode but with a slight twist. For example, the c command is consistent in both modes in that it deletes the specified text and then switches to Insert mode. The difference is in how we specify the range on which to act. From Normal mode, we trigger the change command first and then specify the range as a motion. This, if you'll remember from Tip 12 , is called an operator command. Whereas in Visual mode, we start off by making the selection and then trigger the change command. This inversion of control can be generalized for all operator commands (see Table 2, ​ Vim's Operator Commands ​ ). For most people, the Visual mode approach feels more intuitive.

Let's revisit the simple example where we wanted to change the word "March" to "April." This time, suppose that we have left the confines of the text area on a web page and we're comfortably back inside Vim. We place our cursor somewhere on the word "March" and run viw to visually select the word. Now, we can't just type the word "April" because that would trigger the A command and append the text "pril"! Instead, we'll use the c command to change the selection, deleting the word and dropping us into Insert mode, where we can type out the word "April" in full. This pattern of usage is similar to our original example, except that we use the c key instead of backspace.

Meet Select Mode

In a typical text editing environment, selected text is deleted when we type any printable character. Vim's Visual mode doesn't follow this convention -- but Select mode does. According to Vim's built-in documentation, it "resembles the selection mode in Microsoft Windows" (see Select-mode ⓘ ). Printable characters cause the selection to be deleted, Vim enters Insert mode, and the typed character is inserted.

We can toggle between Visual and Select modes by pressing <C-g> . The only visible difference is the message at the bottom of screen, which switches between -- VISUAL -- and -- SELECT -- . But if we type any printable character in Select mode, it will replace the selection and switch to Insert mode. Of course, from Visual mode you could just as well use the c key to change the selection.

If you are happy to embrace the modal nature of Vim, then you should find little use for Select mode, which holds the hand of users who want to make Vim behave more like other text editors. I can think of only one place where I consistently use Select mode: when using a plugin that emulates TextMate's snippet functionality, Select mode highlights the active placeholder.

[Oct 19, 2018] Vim faster way to select blocks of text in visual mode - Stack Overflow

Oct 19, 2018 | stackoverflow.com

Vim: faster way to select blocks of text in visual mode Ask Question up vote 149 down vote favorite 65

---

Calvin Cheng ,Sep 13, 2011 at 18:52

I have been using vim for quite some time and am aware that selecting blocks of text in visual mode is as simple as SHIFT + V and moving the arrow key up or down line-by-line until I reach the end of the block of text that I want selected.

My question is - is there a faster way in visual mode to select a block of text for example by SHIFT + V followed by specifying the line number in which I want the selection to stop? (via :35 for example, where 35 is the line number I want to select up to - this obviously does not work so my question is to find how if something similar to this can be done...)

user786653 ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:08

+1 Good question as I have found myself doing something like this often. I am wondering if perhaps this isn't the place start using using v% or v/pattern or something else? – user786653 Sep 13 '11 at 19:08

SergioAraujo ,Sep 13, 2011 at 20:30

vip select inner paragraph vis select inner sentence. – SergioAraujo Sep 13 '11 at 20:30

Stephan ,Sep 29, 2014 at 22:49

V35G will visually select from current line to line 35, also V10j or V10k will visually select the next or previous 10 lines – Stephan Sep 29 '14 at 22:49

shriek ,Feb 20, 2015 at 4:28

@Stephan, that's just what I was looking for. Thanks!! – shriek Feb 20 '15 at 4:28

Mikhail V ,Mar 27, 2015 at 16:52

for line selecting I use shortcut: nnoremap <Space> V . When in visual line mode just right-click with mouse to define selection (at least on linux it is so). Anyway, more effective than with keyboard only. – Mikhail V Mar 27 '15 at 16:52

Jay ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:05

In addition to what others have said, you can also expand your selection using pattern searches.

For example, v/foo will select from your current position to the next instance of "foo." If you actually wanted to expand to the next instance of "foo," on line 35, for example, just press n to expand selection to the next instance, and so on.

update

I don't often do it, but I know that some people use marks extensively to make visual selections. For example, if I'm on line 5 and I want to select to line 35, I might press ma to place mark a on line 5, then :35 to move to line 35. Shift + v to enter linewise visual mode, and finally `a to select back to mark a .

Calvin Cheng ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:19

now this is COOL. Thanks! – Calvin Cheng Sep 13 '11 at 19:19

Peter Rincker ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:41

If you need to include the pattern you can use v/foo/e . The e stands for "end" of the matched pattern. – Peter Rincker Sep 13 '11 at 19:41

bheeshmar ,Sep 13, 2011 at 20:29

And you can modify from that line with offsets: V/foo/+5 or V/foo/-5 (I'm using linewise visual mode like the author). – bheeshmar Sep 13 '11 at 20:29

Jay ,Oct 31, 2013 at 0:18

@DanielPark To select the current word, use v i w . If you want to select the current contiguous non-whitespace, use v i Shift + w . The difference would be when the caret is here MyCla|ss.Method , the first combo would select MyClass and second would select the whole thing. – Jay Oct 31 '13 at 0:18

Daniel Park ,Oct 31, 2013 at 1:55

Thanks. Found that also using v i w s allows you to effectively do a "replace" operation. – Daniel Park Oct 31 '13 at 1:55

bheeshmar ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:00

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.

V35G achieves what you want

Daniel Kobe ,Apr 24, 2017 at 18:16

My vim gives me the error Not an editor command: V – Daniel Kobe Apr 24 '17 at 18:16

kzh ,Apr 24, 2017 at 19:42

@Daniel vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/visual.html#V – kzh Apr 24 '17 at 19:42

bheeshmar ,Apr 25, 2017 at 19:06

@DanielKobe, it's a Normal mode command, so don't press ":". – bheeshmar Apr 25 '17 at 19:06

kzh ,Jun 1, 2013 at 12:29

Vim is a language. To really understand Vim, you have to know the language. Many commands are verbs, and vim also has objects and prepositions.

V100G
V100gg

This means "select the current line up to and including line 100."

Text objects are where a lot of the power is at. They introduce more objects with prepositions.

Vap

This means "select around the current paragraph", that is select the current paragraph and the blank line following it.

V2ap

This means "select around the current paragraph and the next paragraph."

}V-2ap

This means "go to the end of the current paragraph and then visually select it and the preceding paragraph."

Understanding Vim as a language will help you to get the best mileage out of it.

After you have selecting down, then you can combine with other commands:

Vapd

With the above command, you can select around a paragraph and delete it. Change the d to a y to copy or to a c to change or to a p to paste over.

Once you get the hang of how all these commands work together, then you will eventually not need to visually select anything. Instead of visually selecting and then deleting a paragraph, you can just delete the paragraph with the dap command.

Daniel Kobe ,Apr 24, 2017 at 18:17

My vim gives me the error Not an editor command: V – Daniel Kobe Apr 24 '17 at 18:17

kzh ,Apr 24, 2017 at 19:43

@Daniel vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/visual.html#V – kzh Apr 24 '17 at 19:43

michaelmichael ,Sep 13, 2011 at 18:58

v35G will select everything from the cursor up to line 35.

v puts you in select mode, 35 specifies the line number that you want to G go to.

You could also use v} which will select everything up to the beginning of the next paragraph.

mateusz.fiolka ,Sep 13, 2011 at 18:58

For selecting number of lines:

shift+v 9j - select 10 lines

Peter Rincker ,Sep 13, 2011 at 19:38

For small ranges this is good, especially when paired with :set rnu – Peter Rincker Sep 13 '11 at 19:38

µBio ,Sep 13, 2011 at 18:55

v 35 j

text added for 30 character minimum

Peng Zhang ,Feb 17, 2016 at 3:28

Shift+V n j or Shift+V n k

This selects the current line and the next/previous n lines. I find it very useful.

Kevin Yue ,Sep 24, 2016 at 5:20

It's very useful, thanks. – Kevin Yue Sep 24 '16 at 5:20

Arsal ,Apr 24, 2017 at 20:09

This is a simple way I was looking for. Thanks – Arsal Apr 24 '17 at 20:09

> ,

Text objects: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Creating_new_text_objects

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#text-objects

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