How to delete (not cut) in Vim

copy/pastevim

How can I delete a line without putting it into my default buffer?

Example:

line that will be copied.

line that I want to be substitued with the previous one.

What I'm trying to do:

yy
dd
p

But Vim replaces the recent copied string with the deleted (cutted) one. I know that I can use buffers like, "1yy, dd then "1p, but I always forget to put the copied string in a buffer then I need to paste my contents first (line that will be copied) and then delete what I want (line that I want to be substituted with the previous one.)

How can I really delete a text in Vi(m) without copying it?

Another related question is how I can forward delete a word in insert mode? I want something similar to Ctrl+w.

Best Answer

The black hole register "_ will do the trick, but there is a better solution:

When you enter the line back with the p command you are pasting the contents of the (volatile) default register "", which has been overwritten by dd. But you still can paste from the (non volatile) yank register "0, which won't be overwritten by the delete command dd.

So these are the commands you want to use as per your example:

yy
dd
"0p

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.

Substituting by \n inserts a null character into the text. To get a newline, use \r. When searching for a newline, you’d still use \n, however. This asymmetry is due to the fact that \n and \r do slightly different things:

\n matches an end of line (newline), whereas \r matches a carriage return. On the other hand, in substitutions \n inserts a null character whereas \r inserts a newline (more precisely, it’s treated as the input CR). Here’s a small, non-interactive example to illustrate this, using the Vim command line feature (in other words, you can copy and paste the following into a terminal to run it). xxd shows a hexdump of the resulting file.

echo bar > test
(echo 'Before:'; xxd test) > output.txt
vim test '+s/b/\n/' '+s/a/\r/' +wq
(echo 'After:'; xxd test) >> output.txt
more output.txt

Before:
0000000: 6261 720a                                bar.
After:
0000000: 000a 720a                                ..r.

In other words, \n has inserted the byte 0x00 into the text; \r has inserted the byte 0x0a.

Eclipse – How to duplicate a whole line in Vim

yy or Y to copy the line (mnemonic: yank)
or
dd to delete the line (Vim copies what you deleted into a clipboard-like "register", like a cut operation)

then

p to paste the copied or deleted text after the current line
or
P to paste the copied or deleted text before the current line

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to replace a character by a newline in Vim

Use \r instead of \n.

Eclipse – How to duplicate a whole line in Vim

Related Topic

Use `\r` instead of `\n`.