Copy and paste content from one file to another file in vi

Question

I am working with two files  and I need to copy a few lines from one file and paste into another file  I know how to copy  yy  and paste  p  in the same file  But that doesn t work for different files  How is this done   Also  is there a way to cut-paste  I have tried googling  but most of the resources only talk about copy-paste

User · Accepted Answer

Since you already know how to cut yank text  here are a few ideas for pasting it back into another file    Edit the first file  yanking the text you want  Then open your second file from within vi   e  path to other file  and paste it Open both files together in a split window and navigate between them using Ctrl   w  Up Down either by    vi -o  path to file1  path to file2 From within the first file  Ctrl   w  s

User · Answer

Goal  save a piece of one file to another file   Solution    Select the text you want to save    Position the cursor where you want to start selection Press v to select characters OR uppercase V to select whole lines Move the cursor to the end of what you want to select  Save selected text to the new file  Type  wSpace and the name of the new file  Actually you ll see     lt    gt w new txt  Then press Enter

User · Answer

Copying text between two buffers     files  that are opened in the same instance of Vim is no problem    Simply yank in one buffer with y  assuming you marked a to-copy area in visual mode before   and then paste into the other buffer with p  It also works with different tabs as long as they re in the same instance of Vim   How to open two files in the same instance of Vim depends on your system    On Win32  there s an option in the context menu saying Edit with one vim if you select two or more files When you re on the console  you can achieve it with vim file1 file2 If you use Vim as editor for another tool  be sure to specify the --remote-silent option to ensure that all files are getting opened in the same instance   If you opened the two files in two different instances of Vim  then you have to go with the system clipboard  in the first Vim instance  yank the text into the system clipboard using   y  again  mark the area to be yanked in visual mode before   then go to the second Vim and paste the clipboard there    p

User · Answer

If you want to copy a part of a file and paste that content in the middle of another file  you can do this way    linenumber linenumber write newfile   Example     2 34 write temp1   Or    mark   mark write newfile   Example     a  b write temp1   Now the lines are copied to another file  If you want to delete those lines after copying  you can do   linenumber1 linenumber2 d   Or     mark1  mark2 d   Now  go to other file   Then keep the cursor on the line where you wanted to paste   Type   r cat temp1   Now  the content of the temp file is pasted here   You can delete the temp file from the command line itself  after pasting the content     rm temp1   This would help if you wanted to copy and paste several times

User · Answer

My scenario was I need to copy n number of lines in middle  n unknown  from file 1 to file 2     a  bw  name of output file txt

User · Answer

Use the variations of d like dd to cut   To write a range of lines to another file you can use     lt n gt   lt m gt  w filename   Where  lt n gt  and  lt m gt  are numbers  or symbols  that designate a range of lines   For using the desktop clipboard  take a look at the  g commands

User · Answer

These are all great suggestions  but if you know location of text in another file use sed with ease   r  sed -n  1 10 p   lt  input file txt This will insert 10 lines in an already open file at the current position of the cursor

User · Answer

Make sure you have the Vim version compiled with clipboard support    echo has  clipboard   should return 1 if it returns 0  for example Mac nbsp OS nbsp X  at least v10 11  El Capitan   v10 9  Mavericks  and v10 8  Mountain Lion  - comes with a Vim version lacking clipboard support   you have to install a Vim version with clipboard support  say via brew install vim  don t forget to relaunch your terminal s  after the installation   Enter a visual mode  V - multiline  v - plain  or Ctrlv - block-visual  Select line s  you wish to copy   y - to copy selected   p - to paste copied   P S    you can replace steps 2-5 with the instructions from the answer by JayG  if you need to copy and paste a single line to ease selecting lines  you can add set mouse  a to your  vimrc - it will allow you to select lines in Vim using the mouse  while not selecting extraneous elements  like line numbers  etc   NOTICE  it will block the ability to copy mouse-selected text to the system clipboard from Vim

User · Answer

2017-05 update   I just found that if you add the following line into your vimrc file      set clipboard unnamed   then Vim is using the system clipboard     I just found the yank way won t work on the way where I copy contents between different Vim instance windows   At least  it doesn t work based on my Vim knowledge  I don t know if there is another way to enable it to work    The yank way only works on the way where multiple files are opened in the same window according to my test   If you want to do that  you d better use OS cut-copy-past way such as Ctrl   x  Ctrl   c  under Windows

User · Answer

While editing the file  make marks where you want the start and end to be using   ma - sets the a mark  mb - sets the b mark  Then  to copy that into another file  just use the w command     a  bw  name of output file txt

User · Answer

The below option works most of time and also for pasting later     xnyy x - buffer name n - number of line to Yank - optional   The lines yanked will be stored in the buffer  x   It can be used anywhere in the edit   To paste line s  in the other file    e filename amp location   Example  Type the below command in the current edit   e  u test Test2 sh and paste using  xP P - before cursor p - after cursor   Complete operation  open file 1    vi Test1 sh  a10yy  -Yanked 10 lines   -now open the second file from the current edit    e  u test Test2 sh    -move the cursor to the line where you have to paste    ap    --Lines from the buffer   a   will be copied after the current cursor pos

User · Answer

If you are using Vim on Windows  you can get access to the clipboard  MS copy paste  using     dd -- cut a line  or 3dd to cut three lines     yy -- copy a line  or 3yy to copy three lines     p  -- paste line s  on line after the cursor    P  -- paste line s  on line before the cursor  The lets you paste between separate Vim windows or between Vim and PC applications  Notepad  Microsoft Word  etc

User · Answer

Example  fileA and fileB - start in fileA at line 25  copy 50 lines  and paste to fileB  fileA  Goto 25th line  25G  copy 50 lines into buffer v   v50yy  Goto fileB   e fileB  Goto line 10  10G      paste contents of buffer v  vp

User · Answer

Another way could be to open the two files in two split buffers and use the following  snippet  after visual selection of the lines of interest    vnoremap  lt F4 gt   y lt CR gt  lt C-W gt Wr lt Esc gt p

User · Answer

These remaps work like a charm for me   vmap  lt C-c gt    y       Yank current selection into system clipboard nmap  lt C-c gt    Y       Yank current line into system clipboard  if nothing is selected  nmap  lt C-v gt    p       Paste from system clipboard   So  when I m at visual mode  I select the lines I want and press Ctrl   c and then Ctrl   v to insert the text in the receiver file  You could use   y as well  but I think this is hard to remember sometimes   This is also useful to copy text from Vim to clipboard   Source  Copy and paste between sessions using a temporary file

User · Answer

Enter command mode and run   r  sed -n   lt start line num gt    lt end line num gt  p  file to extract text from   E g to extract lines 20-30 from filename into the currently opened file   r  sed -n  20  30p  filename

User · Answer

You can open the other file and type  r file to be copied from  Or you can buffer  Or go to the first file  go on the line you want to copy  type  qY  go to the file you want to paste and type  qP    buffer name  copies to the buffer  Y is yank and P is put  Hope that helps

User · Answer

Here s one way to do it    Start Vim and open file1 which is the file you re working on   e file2 which will bring up file2  the file you want to copy lines from  locate the lines you want to copy  If it s three lines  you hit 3yy  b1 this will switch to buffer 1  where file1 is figure out where you want to insert the lines you yanked  and hit p   You could have both files viewable too  Split the screen with e g  Ctrl   w s   As for cutting  d cuts and places the cut stuff in the yank buffer  dd will  cut  a line

[vim] Copy and paste content from one file to another file in vi

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