CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimselectionvertical-text
Michael Härtl
Michael Härtl

Reputation: 8587

How to select a vertical block with exceeding lines?

In Vim you can use Ctrl+v to select a vertical block of code. This is pretty cool, as this way you can insert a rectangular block of text anywhere in your text. A feature I haven't seen anywhere else yet.

But say I have a text like:

1 abcde
2 abcdefg
3 abcdefg
4 abc

I want to select this full block as vertical block. If I'm on the a of line 1, and start selection, then move down to line 4, I can only move the cursor to the last character c in that line. So the lines above are cut off, giving me this selection:

1 abc
2 abc
3 abc
4 abc

Is there a way to get the full text selected as vertical block?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2528

Answers (3)

Kent
Kent

Reputation: 195029

if you want to select exact 4 lines (including the 1st line), you could:

Ctrl-V$3j

this selects all the texts, but they are not really in a "block", because the first line and the last line have different length.

If you do want have a "block" of text, (appending spaces on those "shorter" lines), you could:

set ve=all
Ctrl-V hhhhh... jjjjj...

by setting ve to all, your cursor could go anywhere. If you like after the selection/copying, you could set the ve back to its original value.

Upvotes: 2

Michael Härtl
Michael Härtl

Reputation: 8587

A minute after asking this question i found it out myself. The trick is to press $ on line 4 above. So the full series of keystrokes, if the cursor is on the a of line 1 is:

Ctrl+v3j$

Upvotes: 1

Fabrice Jammes
Fabrice Jammes

Reputation: 3185

a quick and dirty solution is to insert 4 spaces a the end of line 4.

Upvotes: 0

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