Vim: Yanking, Clipboard Usage, and Text Objects

The "c" letter was already used for the change operator, and "y" was still available. Calling this operator "yank" made it easier to remember to use the "y" key. Since "y" is an operator, you use "yw" to yank a word. A count is possible as usual. To yank two words use "y2w". Example: let sqr = LongVariable * ~ --------------> y2w let sqr = LongVariable * ~ p let sqr = LongVariable * LongVariable ~ Notice that "yw" includes the white space after a word. If you don't want this, use "ye". The "yy" command yanks a whole line, just like "dd" deletes a whole line. a text line yy a text line a text line line 2 line 2 p line 2 last line last line a text line last line "Y" was originally equivalent to "yank the entire line", as opposed to "D" which is "delete to end of the line". "Y" has thus been remapped to mean "yank to end of the line" to make it consistent with the behavior of "D". Mappings will be covered in later chapters. ============================================================================== *04.7* Using the clipboard If you are using the GUI version of Vim (gvim), you can find the "Copy" item in the "Edit" menu. First select some text with Visual mode, then use the Edit/Copy menu item. The selected text is now copied to the clipboard. You can paste the text in other programs. In Vim itself too. If you have copied text to the clipboard in another application, you can paste it in Vim with the Edit/Paste menu item. This works in Normal mode and Insert mode. In Visual mode the selected text is replaced with the pasted text. The "Cut" menu item deletes the text before it's put on the clipboard. The "Copy", "Cut" and "Paste" items are also available in the popup menu (only when there is a popup menu, of course). If your Vim has a toolbar, you can also find these items there. If you are not using the GUI, or if you don't like using a menu, you have to use another way. You use the normal "y" (yank) and "p" (put) commands, but prepend "* (double-quote star) before it. To copy a line to the clipboard: > "*yy To put text from the clipboard back into the text: > "*p This only works on versions of Vim that include clipboard support. More about the clipboard can be found in section |09.3| and here: |clipboard|. ============================================================================== *04.8* Text objects If the cursor is in the middle of a word and you want to delete that word, you need to move back to its start before you can do "dw". There is a simpler way to do this: "daw". this is some example text. ~ daw this is some text. ~ The "d" of "daw" is the delete operator. "aw" is a text object. Hint: "aw" stands for "A Word". Thus "daw" is "Delete A Word". To be precise, the white space after the word is also deleted (or the white space before the word if at the end of the line). Using text objects is the third way to make changes in Vim. We already had operator-motion and Visual mode. Now we add operator-text object. It is very similar to operator-motion, but instead of operating on the text between the cursor position before and after a movement command, the text object is used as a whole. It doesn't matter where in the object the cursor was. To change a whole sentence use "cis". Take this text: Hello there. This ~ is an example. Just ~ some text. ~ Move to the start of the second line, on "is an". Now use "cis": Hello there. Just ~ some text. ~ The cursor is in between

This section covers advanced text manipulation in Vim. It details the 'y' (yank) command for copying, including 'yw' for words, 'y2w' for multiple words, and 'yy' for entire lines. It then explains how to use the clipboard with GUI versions of Vim through the Edit menu, and non-GUI versions using '*yy' and '*p'. Finally, it introduces text objects, exemplified by 'daw' (delete a word) and 'cis' (change a sentence), allowing operations on entire text units regardless of cursor position within them.