Vim: Copy selection

you have to yank it to the clipboard register

"*y

:help registers will tell you more about that.

The visual selection (v, V, or CTRL-V) can automatically be copied to the X11 selection (* buffer).

In non-gui mode the clipboard option controls this (only supported if +xterm_clipboard appears when you type vim --version). In gui mode guioptions controls it.

This makes all Visual mode selections automatically go to the X11 primary selection:

set clipboard+=autoselect
set guioptions+=a

This turns it off:

set clipboard-=autoselect
set guioptions-=a

See help 'clipboard' (single quotes required)