copying text with the mouse in VIM, why doesn't it work?

Question

I am using both MacVim and console Vim. My shell is ZSH and the terminal is iTerm2.

What I am trying to achieve:

when I'm dealing with the GUI, in other window, sometimes I want a quick copy paste from a VIM window. I can use the mouse to select the text, but:

• cmd-c doesn't copy
• ctrl-c doesn't copy
• ctrl-shift-c doesn't copy
• right button context menu copies sometimes but not always and I don't know why. I don't know if it's related to the mode I'm in, etc it's just not reliable. At this stage, the menu that appears in the console is not VIM's, since it doesn't have one, but iTerm2, so things get very confusing.

when using MacVim, the menu shows me to use cmd-c to copy, but whether I do it, or using the context menu it sometimes works and, more than often, it doesn't.

Reading from forums, I've tried to do:

:setmouse=a

but, when I press return it doesn't even acknowledge the line.

So, my simple question is: how can I do quickie copies from a mouse selection in VIM to paste it in another window without have to do anything else that would slow me down?

Answer 1

The answer is in the :help mouse information: "If your terminal can't overrule the mouse events going to the application, use: {:set mouse=nvi} Then you can press :, select text for the system, and press Esc to go back to Vim using the mouse events." This works for me in MaсVim in iTerm2 terminal.

Answer 2

The command is

set mouse=a

but you need clipboard interfaces. See :help "*

I would visually select (with or without mouse) and use "*y, or :yank * if it can be done linewise (sometimes the range is easier to type, like :%y*).

Alternately, disable mouse-reporting (Cmd-R on mac) and use the native copy-paste.