CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
fotanus
fotanus

Reputation: 20116

What does the enter key mean in command mode?

I had up to now always yanked or deleted 2 lines with y2y or d2d.

I just discover that you can also do y1CR (where CR is enter). Apart from number 1 appear on the command, it actually yanks two lines.

It also displays on the bottom 2 lines yanked, which don't happens using y2y.

I can't find any mention of enter on vim help. This lead me to two questions:

  1. Is there any other difference except by the extra line when executing those comands using enter?
  2. What enter was supposed to mean in vim, in a broader sense?

Edit: While there are many answers, no one addresses if y2j and y1<CR> are really equivalent on every case, if they are, why the 2 lines yanked only appears on bottom only for the <CR> command.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 777

Answers (4)

Kaz
Kaz

Reputation: 58578

Vi commands are a combination of a count, a motion, and an action. (At least one of the latter two must be present: a motion or action. Otherwise you have a lingering count, waiting for more input.)

y1CR means that the count is 1, the motion is "go to the start of the next line", and the action is "yank". "Go to the start of the next line (doing that just once), and yank the lines which are spanned by the motion". Of course, a count of 1 is superfluous.

With regard to motion and action being combined, you have probably noticed that they do not combine literally; certain combinations follow special rules. For instance the w motion goes to the start of the next word, and the d action (delete) combines with dw in such a way that the word under the cursor, and the space right up the the next word are all deleted. However, the cw combination (change word) only deletes the word up to the whitespace which follows, leaving the whitespace. In that case, c is not acting on the precise motion carried out by w but on an adjusted motion that often makes more sense with c.

I cannot reproduce the behavior that y2j doesn't print the number of lines yanked. In Vim 7.3 on Ubuntu, 3yy, y3y, y2CR and y2j all report 3 lines yanked (if at least 3 lines exist). All these commands are silent if fewer than 3 lines are yanked. (For instance, they are executed too close to the last line of the buffer, where only two or fewer lines remain, or the repetition counts are reduced to 2yy, y2y, y1CR and y1j respectively.)

Vim appears to have a three line threshold for reporting this status message. This could have changed between versions.

Upvotes: 5

Keith Thompson
Keith Thompson

Reputation: 263267

Enter moves from the current line to the following line, so its range covers two lines.

Commands like y combined with a movement command are applied to the range of text specified by the movement command. For example, w moves from the current position forward to the beginning of the next word, so yw yanks all the text in that range.

Similarly, yEnter applies to the two lines covered by the Enter command -- and since that motion is line-oriented, it applies to the two entire lines, not to some subset of them affected by the starting position.

Upvotes: 4

acushner
acushner

Reputation: 9946

another way to do that is simply y<CR>. and i often actually use things like yj or dk.

Upvotes: 1

romainl
romainl

Reputation: 196556

{count}<CR> means "go down {count} lines".

It's really not that hard to find: see :help <CR>.

I tend to prefer 2yy or 2dd; it's semantically cleaner and easier to type. From a grammatical perspective, y2y sounds weird: "yank two times yank" whereas 2yy sounds almost like plain (yoda) english: "two times yank".

Upvotes: 5

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