vim struggles when copy-pasting large blocks of text in from an external window

Question

I select and copy a large block of plain text from some file (e.g. gedit). I run :set paste and then enter insert mode, and paste the text in using the right mouse-button menu. vim them uses 100% cpu for the next several minutes before successfully pasting my text in. The text is usually only a few pages, and takes less than a second to paste into other applications (gedit window, web window, etc). What is vim doing with all those clock cycles and how can I make this more efficient?

Solution 1

You should probably file a bug report against vim on this one.

Solution 2

Based on a suggestion from the maintainer after filing a bug report, it seems this problem is caused by the syntax highlighter. Disabling syntax highlighting temporarily (:set syntax=off) fixes this, though having to do both that and :set paste, and then toggle each back again is rather annoying (yes, I know I could map the commands in .vimrc. It is still annoying). Pasting also runs faster in gvim than in vim. Not sure why.

So, current answer is "turn off syntax highlighting"...

Solution 3

The correct way to paste text in vim is with the p command (from normal mode).

To paste from the xclipboard (the 'middle-click' clipboard), you should use "*p. To paste from the Ctrl+v clipbaord, use "+p.

Comments

[karim]

okay, thanks. I've posted my bug to [email protected] as suggested here: vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/intro.html, we'll see if anything happens.

[ndemou]

Why don't you mark this as the correct answer?

[karim]

Because I feel that Jim's answer is correct, this is a bug. There's no reason one should need to turn syntax highlighting off for a simple copy-paste to work smoothly like it does in gedit, etc. Just seems that the bug depends on the syntax highlighter extension, not base vim.

[SilverWolf]

...Unless your vim doesn't support ”+, like the Mac default version. (:

[Tomáš Janoušek]

This may also be caused by foldexpr. When I'm pasting into markdown, just disabling syntax doesn't help. I've documented a fix in this answer: stackoverflow.com/a/61694190/3407728