How to paste over without overwriting register
Does anyone know of a way to paste over a visually selected area without having the selection placed in the default register?
I know I can solve the problem by always pasting from an explicit register. But it's a pain in the neck to type "xp instead of just p
Solution 1:
Use the following:
xnoremap p pgvy
this will reselect and re-yank any text that is pasted in visual mode.
Edit: in order this to work with "xp
you can do:
xnoremap p pgv"@=v:register.'y'<cr>
v:register
expands to the last register name used in a normal mode command.
Solution 2:
I don't like the default vim behavior of copying all text deleted with d
, D
, c
, or C
into the default register.
I've gotten around it by mapping d
to "_d
, c
to "_c
, and so on.
From my .vimrc:
"These are to cancel the default behavior of d, D, c, C
" to put the text they delete in the default register.
" Note that this means e.g. "ad won't copy the text into
" register a anymore. You have to explicitly yank it.
nnoremap d "_d
vnoremap d "_d
nnoremap D "_D
vnoremap D "_D
nnoremap c "_c
vnoremap c "_c
nnoremap C "_C
vnoremap C "_C
Solution 3:
"{register}p
won't work as you describe. It will replace the selection with the content of the register. You will have instead to do something like:
" I haven't found how to hide this function (yet)
function! RestoreRegister()
let @" = s:restore_reg
return ''
endfunction
function! s:Repl()
let s:restore_reg = @"
return "p@=RestoreRegister()\<cr>"
endfunction
" NB: this supports "rp that replaces the selection by the contents of @r
vnoremap <silent> <expr> p <sid>Repl()
Which should be fine as long as you don't use a plugin that has a non-nore vmap to p, and that expects a register to be overwritten.
This code is available as a script there. Ingo Karkat also defined a plugin solving the same issue.
Solution 4:
In your .vimrc
xnoremap p "_dP
I found this from a response on a similar thread, but the original source was http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Replace_a_word_with_yanked_text. It mentions some drawbacks, however it works fine for me.