By default, the paste commands use the " (“unnamed”) register. Effectively, any command that writes to a register also writes to the unnamed register, so yanks, deletes, and changes all affect it. This is why your yank-delete-paste sequence pastes the deleted text instead of the yanked text.
The 0 register can help here. Any yank commands that do not specify a register put the yanked text in register 0 (in addition to "). It is not affected by delete or change operations, so you can use it to paste a yanked line multiple times even if you do intermediate deletes or changes.
yy: Registers 0 and " both now have the yanked line.- Move to a line to replace.
dd: Register " now has the deleted line, but register 0 still has the yanked line.
"0P: Paste the originally yanked line from register 0.- Move to the next line to replace.
dd"0P (same as above)
(Due to the way cursor positioning works when replacing the last line of a buffer, you will want to use "0p instead of "0P.)
This is very close to Bruce Ediger’s answer, except that you do not have to specify a register when initially yanking. Using one or more named registers can be very handy though if you need to (for example) replace some lines with AAA, but other lines with BBB (put AAA in register a, and BBB in register b (or leave one of them in register 0), then paste them accordingly).
You can also paste from 0 in line-wise visual mode (V) to save a keystroke: V"0p.
If you do not like having to type "0, you might find a mapping more convenient:
noremap <Leader>p "0p
noremap <Leader>P "0P
vnoremap <Leader>p "0p
An alternate approach is to delete to the _ (“blackhole”) register. When you delete to it, the " register is not affected, so your yank-delete-paste sequence can still paste the yanked text from the unnamed register.
yy: Register 0 and " both now have the yanked line."_dd: No change to the registers.
P: Paste the originally yanked text from register ".
Again, you might find a mapping more convenient:
noremap <Leader>d "_d
You can :set virtualedit+=onemore, which allows you to go just past the last character. Unfortunately for you, $ still goes to the last character; you have to cursor over to get past it. On the other hand, you can use g$, which normally goes to the last character of the screen line on a line that wraps; in onemore mode it also goes just past the last character of a non-wrapped line (or the last screen line of a wrapped line).
:h 'virtualedit' says this option can mess up scripts, but I don't know how big a risk that is in reality.
Best Answer
Two suggestions to paste the contents on a line of its own:
You can use the
:put!command, since it always works linewise. The version with the!inserts the contents of the register before (rather than after) the current line. (You can abbreviate it to:pu!.)You can use O, Ctrl+R, ", Esc to insert a line above with the contents of the latest yank. See help on i_CTRL-R for the Ctrl+R part. And
"is the "unnamed" register, which is where yanks and deletes go by default. This is not necessarily "easier" than O, Esc, p, but it has the advantage that it's a single command, so it's repeatable with . and the whole action can be undone at once.If this is a frequent enough operation for you, consider creating a mapping for it, that would be surely the easiest one to type. :-)