How can I save a text block in visual mode to a file in Vim?
The title is very descriptive. Just in case, I will give an example:
START BLOCK1
something
END BLOCK1
START BLOCK2
something
somenthing...
END BLOCK2
- I select the
BLOCK1
in visual mode - I yank it by pressing y
- How can I save the yanked
BLOCK1
to some other file?
Select the text you wish to save, in either line visual or block visual mode, and
:w new.txt
That's what you type, but you won't actually see exactly what's above. When you press :
, you'll go to the command line which will automatically get filled in with selection information. It'll look something like this:
:'<,'>
Just carry on typing the rest (w new.txt
) to get
:'<,'>w new.txt
...and press enter.
With the block is selected, you can :'<,'>w other-file
, which will write only the selected block to other-file
. Hitting :
in visual mode should place '<,'>
into the command line for you already, so you really only have to type :w other-file
.