Vim: Can I make only y perform a copy

vim

I'm learning to like vim, but one thing that I haven't yet fully embraced is the copy and paste situation. In a muggle text editor I would Ctrl–C copy a piece of text and then edit/delete and then paste the text somewhere else. However in vim I can't do this because after I copy text with y, modifying the text often involves d and x which obliterates my original text.

Is there any way to make d and x not copy the text? Or otherwise, how should I be using these vim features?

Best Answer

The 9 previous yanks are saved in registers called 1 through 9. You can recall the next-to-last yank with "1p, the previous one with "2p and so on. The command :reg shows the registers that are available for pasting.

If you want a yank to last longer, use a letter register.

For the more obscure yank-related commands, start reading at :help " in the manual.

Related Solutions

Cursor position after pasting in vi / vim

In vim, use gp and gP instead of p and P to leave the cursor after the pasted text. If you want to swap the bindings, put the following lines in your .vimrc:

noremap p gp
noremap P gP
noremap gp p
noremap gP P

Strangely, in vim, p and P leave the cursor on the last pasted character for a character buffer, even in compatible mode.

I don't know how to change this in other vi versions.

How to select/delete until end of file in vim/gvim

VGx

Enter Visual Mode, go to End of File, delete.

Alternatively, you can do:

Vggx

To delete from the current position to the beginning of the file.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Cursor position after pasting in vi / vim

How to select/delete until end of file in vim/gvim

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