Vim: pasting lines line by line

commandeditorsvim

Let's suppose I have a file containing:

xxx
yyy
zzz

and another file:

kkk
qqq
ppp

I want to obtain:

xxxkkk
yyyqqq
zzzppp

Is that possible in Vim with some command? (I've tried using VISUAL BLOCK but with no success).

In my particular case I have two big files with many lines to paste so the answer could also be some shell command but i would like to know if there's a way to do it even within the same file.

Best Answer

From the command line, you could try

paste -d '\0' file1 file2 > file3

That does exactly what you want.

Visual Block mode in vim is also perfectly suited for this task. Are you sure you did it correctly? You should

Go to visual block mode
Select text and press y for yanking
Go to the other file, on the upper left corner of the to be paste data (last x) and press p.

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Vim Replace – How to Replace First N Occurrences on a Line

Building on the :s/pattern/replacement/gc idea from Samus_ (which seems to be the simplest way to ensure correct operation when pattern is contained within the replacement string), to replace the 2nd through 4th occurrences on a single line:

:call feedkeys("nyyyq") | s/pat/string/gc

feedkeys() is a function that stuffs the input string into the keyboard input queue. The point is to do the counting upfront so you don't have to worry about losing count or getting interrupted.

For a more general case, to replace the Mth through Nth occurrences on a single line for N greater than or equal to a very large M:

:call feedkeys(repeat("n", M-1) . repeat("y", N-M+1) . "q") | s/pat/string/gc

Replace M and N with the values you want (you can even let vim do the trivial mental arithmetic if you don't want to do it yourself). Note that . is VimL's string concatenation operator. Obviously this only saves keystrokes for large M. If you use this functionality frequently, it may save you time to put the above in a custom command or function of some sort, as it is quite a bit to type.

Delete whitespace for a set of lines in Vim editor

:%s/^\s\+
" Same thing (:le = :left = left-align given range):
:%le

Learn more here at http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Remove_unwanted_spaces

If you want to do this for a particular range of lines:

:19,25s/^\s\+//

BTW, best way to start learning vim is to execute vimtutor command, it will teach you how to use Vim in Vim editor.

Best Answer

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