While editing in vim, I was trying to get the line count in a selection (gC-g with the lines selected)
I missed the first g by mistake(so in visual line mode press C-g), and vim went from -- VISUAL LINE --
to -- SELECT LINE --
Ive had a look around google, and in vim docs but cant see anything about this mode ? What is it for ?
Best Answer
Visual mode has three different ways of highlighting:
-- VISUAL --
-- VISUAL BLOCK --
-- VISUAL LINE --
You were in Visual linewise mode. So when you switched to Select mode, it appended to word
LINE
to the mode to remind you that anything you do in select mode will affect the entire line of the highlighted area. In select mode, the commands entered on the keyboard behave more like if you selected text using a mouse in Windows Notepad and then started typing. Meaning you can no longer use Normal mode motions and operators.This chart shows how to switch between the different modes but doesn't explicitly cover the linewise/characterwise difference (that's covered elsewhere):