Vim insert the same characters across multiple lines

Question

Sometimes I want to edit a certain visual block of text across multiple lines   For example  I would take a text that looks like this   name comment phone email   And make it look like this  vendor name vendor comment vendor phone vendor email   Currently the way I would do it now is      Select all 4 row lines of a block by pressing V and then j four times  Indent with    Go back one letter with h  Go to block visual mode with Ctrlv  Select down four rows by pressing j four times  At this point you have selected a 4x1 visual blocks of whitespace  four rows and one column   Press C  Notice this pretty much indented to the left by one column  Type out a   vendor   without the quote  Notice the extra space we had to put back  Press Esc  This is one of the very few times I use Esc to get out of insert mode  Ctrlc would only edit the first line  Repeat step 1  Indent the other way with  lt     I don t need to indent if there is at least one column of whitespace before the words  I wouldn t need the whitespace if I didn t have to clear the visual block with c   But if I have to clear  then is there a way to do what I performed above without creating the needed whitespace with indentation   Also why does editing multiple lines at once only work by exiting out of insert mode with Esc over Ctrlc     Here is a more complicated example   name      models CharField  max length   135   comment   models TextField  blank   True   phone     models CharField  max length   135  blank   True   email     models EmailField  blank   True     to  name      models whatever CharField  max length   135   comment   models whatever TextField  blank   True   phone     models whatever CharField  max length   135  blank   True   email     models whatever EmailField  blank   True     In this example I would perform the vertical visual block over the    and then reinsert it back during insert mode  i e   type  whatever   Hopefully now you can see the drawback to this method  I am limited to only selecting a column of text that are all the same in a vertical position

User · Answer

s   vendor     or am I missing something

User · Answer

Another approach is to use the    dot  command in combination with I    Move the cursor where you want to start Press I Type in the prefix you want  e g  vendor   Press esc  Press j to go down a line Type   to repeat the last edit  automatically inserting the prefix again Alternate quickly between j and     I find this technique is often faster than the visual block mode for small numbers of additions and has the added benefit that if you don t need to insert the text on every single line in a range you can easily skip them by pressing extra j s   Note that for large number of contiguous additions  the block approach or macro will likely be superior

User · Answer

I wanted to comment out a lot of lines in some config file on a server that only had vi  no nano   so visual method was cumbersome as well  Here s how i did that    Open file vi file Display line numbers  set number  or  set number Then use the line numbers to replace start-of-line with      how     35 77s       Note  the numbers are inclusive  lines from 35 to 77  both included will be modified   To uncomment undo that  simply use  35 77s       If you want to add a text word as a comment after every line of code  you can also use    35 77s    test   for languages like Python     35 77s         test   for languages like Java   credits references    https   unix stackexchange com questions 84929 uncommenting-multiple-lines-of-code-specified-by-line-numbers-using-vi-or-vim https   unix stackexchange com questions 120615 how-to-comment-multiple-lines-at-once

User · Answer

I would use a macro to record my actions and would then repeat it    Put your cursor on the first letter in name  Hit qq to start recording into the q buffer  Hit i to go into insert mode  type vector   and then hit Esc to leave insert mode  Now hit 0 to go back to the beginning of the line  Now hit j to go down  Now hit q again to stop recording    You now have a nice macro   Type 3 q to execute your macro three times to do the rest of the lines

User · Answer

Ctrl   v to go to visual block mode Select the lines using the up and down arrow Enter lowercase 3i  press lowercase I three times  I  press capital I  That will take you into insert mode   Write the text you want to add Esc Press the down arrow

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Updated January 2016  Whilst the accepted answer is a great solution  this is actually slightly fewer keystrokes  and scales better - based in principle on the accepted answer    Move the cursor to the n in name  Enter visual block mode  ctrlv   Press 3j Press I  Type in vendor   Press esc      Note  this has fewer keystrokes than the accepted answer provided  compare Step 3   We just count the number of j actions to perform   If you have line numbers enabled  as illustrated above   and know the line number you wish to move to  then step 3 can be changed to  G where   is the wanted line number   In our example above  this would be 4G  However when dealing with just a few line numbers an explicit count works well

User · Answer

Suppose you have this file   something  name comment phone email  something else and more       You want to add  vendor   in front of  name    comment    phone   and  email   regardless of where they appear in the file     s   lt   name  comment  phone  email    gt  vendor  1 gc   The c flag will prompt you for confirmation  You can drop that if you don t want the prompt

User · Answer

Select the lines you want to modify using CtrlV  Press    I  Insert before what s selected  A  Append after what s selected  c  Replace what s selected   Type the new text  Press Esc to apply the changes to all selected lines

User · Answer

Use Ctrl V to enter visual block mode Move Up Down to select the columns of text in the lines you want to comment  Then hit Shift i and type the text you want to insert  Then hit Esc  wait 1 second and the inserted text will appear on every line

User · Answer

An alternative that can be more flexible   Example  To enter the text XYZ at the beginning of the line    norm IXYZ   What s happening here         Execute on every line norm    Execute the following keys in normal mode I    Insert at beginning of line XYZ    The text you want to enter   Then you hit Enter  and it executes   Specific to your request     norm Ivendor    You can also choose a particular range    2 4norm Ivendor    Or execute over a selected visual range      lt    gt norm Ivendor

User · Answer

Move the cursor to the n in name  Enter visual block mode  Ctrlv   Press j three times  or 3j   Press I  capital i   Type in vendor   Note  It will only update the screen in the first line - until Esc is pressed  6    at which point all lines will be updated  Press Esc      An uppercase I must be used rather than a lowercase i  because the lowercase i is interpreted as the start of a text object  which is rather useful on its own  e g  for selecting inside a tag block  it

User · Answer

You might also have a use case where you want to delete a block of text and replace it   Like this  Hello World  Hello World   To  Hello Cool  Hello Cool   You can just visual block select  World  in both lines   Type c for change - now you will be in insert mode   Insert the stuff you want and hit escape   Both get reflected vertically  It works just like  I   except that it replaces the block with the new text instead of inserting it

[vim] Vim: insert the same characters across multiple lines

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