How to paste yanked text into the Vim command line

Question

I d like to paste yanked text into Vim s command line  Is it possible

User · Answer

If you have two values yanked into two different registers (for example register a and register b) then you can simply set a variable c and do the operation on it.

For example, :set c = str2float(@a) + str2float(@b) and then you can paste the content of c anywhere.

For example whilst in INSERT mode, CTRL + R then type = to enter into the expression register and just type c after equal sign and hit ENTER. Done you should now have the total of a and b registers.

All these can be recorded in a macro and repeated over!

The str2float function is used if you are working with floats, if you don't, you will get integers instead.

I am not sure if this is idiomatic but it worked for my case where I needed to add 2 numbers in a row and repeat it for 500 more lines.

User · Answer

For pasting something that is the system clipboard you can just use SHIFT - INS   It works in Windows  but I am guessing it works well in Linux too

User · Answer

For context  this information comes from out-of-the-box  no plugins  no  vimrc Vim 7 4 behavior in Linux Mint with the default options   You can always select text with the mouse  or using V or v and placing the selection in the    register   and paste it into the command line with Shift   Ctrl   v   Typing Ctrl   r in the command line will cause a prompt for a register name  so typing  CTRL-r  will place the content register   into the command line  It will paste any register  not just     See  help c CTRL-R   Furthermore  the middle mouse button will paste into the command line   See  help- gt quote-plus for a description of the how X Window deals with selection  Even in a plain  out-of-the-box Vim  again  in Vim 7 4 in Linux Mint  anyway   any selection made with the left mouse button can be pasted in the command line with the middle mouse button   In addition  the middle mouse button will also paste text selected in Vim into many other X Window  applications  even GUI ones  for example  Firefox and Thunderbird  and pasting text into the command line is also possible where the text was selected from other apps   See  help- x11-selection for addl information   tl dr  Try the  CTRL-r approach first  and then use Shift   Ctrl   v or the middle mouse button if you need something else   It is conceded that it can be confusing

User · Answer

Yes  Hit Ctrl-R then    If you have literal control characters in what you have yanked  use Ctrl-R  Ctrl-O      Here is an explanation of what you can do with registers  What you can do with registers is extraordinary  and once you know how to use them you cannot live without them   Registers are basically storage locations for strings  Vim has many registers that work in different ways    0  yank register  when you use y in normal mode  without specifying a register  yanked text goes there and also to the default register   1 to 9  shifting delete registers  when you use commands such as c or d  what has been deleted goes to register 1  what was in register 1 goes to register 2  etc       default register  also known as unnamed register  This is where the   comes in Ctrl-R      a to z for your own use  capitalized A to Z are for appending to corresponding registers      acts like  dev null  Unix  or NUL  Windows   you can write to it but it s discarded and when you read from it  it is always empty   -  small delete register      search pattern register  updated when you look for text with         or   for instance  you can also write to it to dynamically change the search pattern      stores last VimL typed command via Q or    readonly     and    system clipboard registers  you can write to them to set the clipboard and read the clipboard contents from them    See  help registers for the full reference   You can  at any moment  use  registers to display the contents of all registers  Synonyms and shorthands for this command are  display   reg and  di   In Insert or Command-line mode  Ctrl-R plus a register name  inserts the contents of this register  If you want to insert them literally  no auto-indenting  no conversion of control characters like 0x08 to backspace  etc   you can use Ctrl-R  Ctrl-O  register name  See  help i CTRL-R and following paragraphs for more reference   But you can also do the following  and I probably forgot many uses for registers     In normal mode  hit   p  The last command you used in vim is pasted into your buffer  Let s decompose    is a Normal mode command that lets you select what register is to be used during the next yank  delete or paste operation  So    selects the colon register  storing last command   Then p is a command you already know  it pastes the contents of the register   cf   help     help quote   You re editing a VimL file  for instance your  vimrc  and would like to execute a couple of consecutive lines right now  yj   Enter  Here  yj yanks current and next line  this is because j is a linewise motion but this is out of scope of this answer  into the default register  also known as the unnamed register   Then the    Ex command plays Ex commands stored in the register given as argument  and   is how you refer to the unnamed register  Also see the top of this answer  which is related   Do not confuse   used here  which is a register name  with the   from the previous example  which was a Normal-mode command   cf   help    and  help quote quote Insert the last search pattern into your file in Insert mode  or into the command line  with Ctrl-R      cf   help quote    help i CTRL-R    Corollary  Keep your search pattern but add an alternative    Ctrl-R      alternative  You ve selected two words in the middle of a line in visual mode  yanked them with y  they are in the unnamed register  Now you want to open a new line just below where you are  with those two words   pu  This is shorthand for  put     The  put command  like many Ex commands  works only linewise   cf   help  put  You could also have done   call setreg           V   then p  The setreg function sets the register of which the name is given as first argument  as a string   initializes it with the contents of the second argument  and you can use registers as variables with the name  x where x is the register name in VimL   and turns it into the mode specified in the third argument  V for linewise  nothing for characterwise and literal  V for blockwise   cf   help setreg    The reverse functions are getreg   and getregtype    If you have recorded a macro with qa   q  then  echo  a will tell you what you have typed  and  a will replay the macro  probably you knew that one  very useful in order to avoid repetitive tasks   cf   help q  help    Corollary from the previous example  If you have 8go in the clipboard  then    will play the clipboard contents as a macro  and thus go to the 8th byte of your file  Actually this will work with almost every register  If your last inserted string was dd in Insert mode  then    will  because the   register contains the last inserted string  delete a line   Vim documentation is wrong in this regard  since it states that the registers         and   will only work with p  P   put and Ctrl-R    cf   help    Don t confuse     command that plays Vim commands from a register  and    normal-mode command that plays normal-mode commands from a register    Notable exception is     The command register does not contain the initial colon neither does it contain the final carriage return  However in Normal mode     will do what you expect  interpreting the register as an Ex command  not trying to play it in Normal mode  So if your last command was  e  the register contains e but    will reload the file  not go to end of word   cf   help    Show what you will be doing in Normal mode before running it     dd  Enter  As soon as you hit the   key  Vim switches to expression evaluation  as you enter an expression and hit Enter  Vim computes it  and the result acts as a register content  Of course the register   is read-only  and one-shot  Each time you start using it  you will have to enter a new expression   cf   help quote    Corollary  If you are editing a command  and you realize that you should need to insert into your command line some line from your current buffer  don t press Esc  Use Ctrl-R  getline 58  Enter  After that you will be back to command line editing  but it has inserted the contents of the 58th line  Define a search pattern manually   let       foo   cf   help  let  Note that doing that  you needn t to escape   in the pattern  However you need to double all single quotes of course  Copy all lines beginning with foo  and afterwards all lines containing bar to clipboard  chain these commands  qaq  resets the a register storing an empty macro inside it    g  foo y A   g bar y A   let       a   Using a capital register name makes the register work in append mode  Better  if Q has not been remapped by mswin vim  start Ex mode with Q  chain those    colon commands    which are actually better called    Ex commands     and go back to Normal mode by typing visual   cf   help  g   help  y   help Q Double-space your file   g   put     This puts the contents of the black hole register  empty when reading  but writable  behaving like  dev null  linewise  after each line  because every line has a beginning    Add a line containing foo before each line   g   -put   foo   This is a clever use of the expression register  Here  - is a synonym for  -1  cf   help  range   Since  put puts the text after the line  you have to explicitly tell it to act on the previous one  Copy the entire buffer to the system clipboard    y    cf   help  range  for the   part  and  help  y  If you have misrecorded a macro  you can type  let  a   Ctrl-R  replace  a           g   Enter   and edit it  This will modify the contents of the macro stored in register a  and it s shown here how you can use the expression register to do that  If you did dddd  you might do uu in order to undo  With p you could get the last deleted line  But actually you can also recover up to 9 deletes with the registers  1 through  9   Even better  if you do  1P  then   in Normal mode will play  2P  and so on   cf   help   and  help quote number If you want to insert the current date in Insert mode  Ctrl-R strftime   y m d  Enter   cf   help strftime     Once again  what can be confusing       is a command-line command that interprets the contents of a register as vimscript and sources it    in normal mode command that interprets the contents of a register as normal-mode keystrokes  except when you use   register  that contains last played command without the initial colon  in this case it replays the command as if you also re-typed the colon and the final return key      in normal mode command that helps you select a register for yank  paste  delete  correct  etc     is also a valid register name  the default  or unnamed  register  and therefore can be passed as an arguments for commands that expect register names

User · Answer

OS nbsp X  If you are using Vim in Mac OS nbsp X  unfortunately it comes with older version  and not complied with clipboard options  Luckily  Homebrew can easily solve this problem   Install Vim   brew install vim --with-lua --with-override-system-vi  Install the GUI version of Vim   brew install macvim --with-lua --with-override-system-vi  Restart the terminal for it to take effect    Append the following line to    vimrc  set clipboard unnamed  Now you can copy the line in Vim with yy and paste it system-wide

User · Answer

I was having a similar problem   I wanted the selected text to end up in a command  but not rely on pasting it in   Here s the command I was trying to write a mapping for    call VimuxRunCommand  python     The docs for this plugin only show using string literals  The following will break if you try to select text that contains doublequotes   vnoremap y call VimuxRunCommand   lt c-r gt     lt cr gt    To get around this  you just reference the contents of the macro using      vnoremap y call VimuxRunCommand     lt cr gt    Passes the contents of the unnamed register in and works with my double quote and multiline edgecases

User · Answer

It s worth noting also that the yank registers are the same as the macro buffers  In other words  you can simply write out your whole command in your document  including your pasted snippet   then  by to yank it to the b register  and then run it with  b

User · Answer

I d like to paste yanked text into Vim command line    While the top voted answer is very complete  I prefer editing the command history   In normal mode  type  q   This will give you a list of recent commands  editable and searchable with normal vim commands  You ll start on a blank command line at the bottom   For the exact thing that the article asks  pasting a yanked line  or yanked anything  into a command line  yank your text and then  q p  get into command history edit mode  and then  p ut your yanked text into a new command line  Edit at will  enter to execute   To get out of command history mode  it s the opposite  In normal mode in command history  type   q   enter

User · Answer

For pasting something from the system clipboard into the Vim command line ("command mode"), use Ctrl+R followed by +. For me, at least on Ubuntu, Shift+Ins is not working.

PS: I am not sure why Ctrl+R followed by *, which is theoretically the same as Ctrl+R followed by + doesn't seem to work always. I searched and discovered the + version and it seems to work always, at least on my box.

User · Answer

a-z y  Copy text to the  a-z  register Use    to go to the edit command Ctrl   R  Follow the register identity to paste what you copy    It used to CentOS 7

[vim] How to paste yanked text into the Vim command line

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