How to yank an entire block in Vim?

Question

Is it possible to yank an entire block of Python code in Vim?

Be it a def, for, if, etc. block...

Solution 1

You can yank a paragraph with y}. This will not yank all the methods if you have a blank line though.

Solution 2

If you want to yank everything except the { use yi{ (or yi}). If you to include the curly braces use ya{ (or ya}).

The i and a modifiers mean in and all.

To yank a word no matter where in the word you are: yiw

To yank the contents of parentheses: yi); if you want to include them, use ya(

You can do the same for " or ' with yi", ya" or yi' and ya'.

Of course, you're not limited to yanking. You can delete a word with diw or change it with ciw, etc... etc...

Solution 3

The excellent add-on suite Python-mode includes some key commands to navigate classes, methods, and function blocks.

• To yank a method: yaM (inner method: yiM)

• To yank a class: yaC

There are other handy motions, like moving from function-to-function (]]). See the complete list of keys for more.

Solution 4

You can combine a search with yank, so if your function ends with return retval you can type y/return retval

Solution 5

I usually just use visual block mode. Shift-V, move, and 'y'ank the highlighted block. There's only so many shortcuts I can keep in memory at once :)

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Comments

[Joachim Sauer]

"Belongs on superuser.com", maybe? I'm not sure ...

[Adam Bellaire]

Don't agree, this is about the use of a software tool in a specific development process (coding Python), see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12373/…

[noomz]

You can use Ctrl-v and y} to see which lines will be yanked. You can press } as you want to cover your block.

[John La Rooy]

This is what I usually do too, I don't think it's the best way, but it's easy enough to do with one brain cell :)

[John La Rooy]

the visual selection is also very useful for indenting/dedenting blocks using > and <

[jmhmccr]

Great for a C language. I think the question was specific to python though.

[Robert Rüger]

There is also p to yank the current paragraph (that is anything separated by blank lines above an below). yip yanks the entire paragraph, and yap yanks the entire paragraph + the following blank line. This is useful if your cursor is already somewhere inside the paragraph you want to yank.

[Andy]

Where is this feature in the help document? I look for a long time did not find the corresponding URL.The modifier cannot be found using help: a.