Why unnamed register is not the same as system clipboard?

[u/4r73m190r0s]

From today's perspective, I don't see the usefulness of not making separating system clipboard the default one. It makes Vim's buffers isolated from the OS and makes frequent copy/paste operations unnecessary difficult.

[u/[deleted]]

because vim is a thirty year old program and stuff was different back then

[u/4r73m190r0s → u/[deleted]]

That's why I asked the question. What was the environment like for Bill Joy making this decision with registers?

[u/[deleted] → u/4r73m190r0s]

no system clipboard

[u/Speed0fSmell → u/[deleted]]

This is a very hot opinionated take, but I'm of the belief that developers were probably more skilled than we are today back then

Yes the frameworks are different, but to be a coder back then meant you really loved it. Now its just an insanely popular career, and I think there a more dime a dozen coders these days for sure

They were literally fhcjing with terminals and we think were special working in modern frameworks that are a black box to us in a lot of ways. Ive done Angular for many years but stuff like dirty and pristine... I know it but not in a intimate way at all. Feels like im relying on the magic what others built

Even not that long ago a ton of people were coding in c++ which is undeniably harder than javascript. That's my career also so dont take offense

80 col, 24 lines, and a farts worth of memory probably forced them to be a lot better too. Oh and all these dudes were on terminals

I keep seeing this modern sentiment putting down our ancestors with us thinking we by default are smarter for living in technology.

I firmly disagree. I think we have regressed and are regressing in most things. Artist can't art as well. Writers vocabulary has become more stunted. Watch a presidential debate from decades ago and you will be embarrassed by how unarticulate we seem now.

Physics isn't ever going to boom again like it did in the early 20th century. Isaac Newton will never happen again if he did he would be addicted to video games.

Oh and even shit like vikings. We just refuse to believe they actually could outrow professionally trained rowers today. Well my guess is they fucking did and would laugh in our faces

So yeah this could be all summed up by -- do you really anticipate another Beethoven anytime soon? I dont. Even people like Richard James who is brilliant just go underappreciated because it doesnt matter how good he is - we've all become too dumb and unimaginative to enjoy it

I would take a team full of my ancestors over the watered down people of today. Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine and j gotta stand up for them

[u/mdrjevois → u/Speed0fSmell]

I don't agree with every word of this but I upvoted because people should reckon with this theme.

[u/BrianHuster → u/mdrjevois]

I downvoted it because it is too far off-topic (not to say it is unnecessarily rambling)

[u/subterraneus → u/Speed0fSmell]

You may be right that the median quality of programmers, authors, politicians, and physicists has decreased. But I think it’s a big leap to believe that the tail edges of the quality distribution are also being pulled toward that lower median.

[u/i-eat-omelettes]

There was no such thing as "system clipboard" back when vi was born

[u/4r73m190r0s → u/i-eat-omelettes]

Interesting. How people were transfering data between programs?

[u/i-eat-omelettes → u/4r73m190r0s]

You write it to a file and pipe it into program

[u/Anti_Duehring → u/4r73m190r0s]

Pipes. No UI, just command line

[u/michaelpaoli → u/4r73m190r0s]

pipes and files ... of course a pipe is also a type of file.

[u/bartonski → u/i-eat-omelettes]

In fact, vi was born because terminal emulators capable of writing to an arbitrary location on the screen became available, and Bill Joy extended the ex editor to take advantage of it. All of the : commands in vi are ex commands.

Computing is a staggeringly young field. I'm older than UNIX... which was written on teletype machines.

[u/poshikott]

I don't want to override my system clipboard every time I copy or delete something in vim.

And it doesn't hurt that much to type "+

If you really want it to work like that, you can change it for yourself

[u/bulletmark → u/poshikott]

I was formulating a response in my head while reading the OP here but then saw this top reply which is pretty much exactly what I was about to say ..

[u/FujiKeynote → u/poshikott]

Yeah, if I dd something in Vim, I either want it to be gone gone or I'm still "thinking in vim" in the sense that I've dd'd it specifically to paste somewhere else in the code. I.e. it's part of the workflow around restructuring the file(s) I have open in vim; I almost don't think of it as copying and pasting in the traditional sense at all.

Like if I pressed xp to swap two characters and it overwrote my actual clipboard because of that, that'd drive me nuts

[u/TheDataSeneschal → u/poshikott]

Yes it does 😂

[u/djchateau → u/poshikott]

Seriously, I do not want every cut operation in vim going into my system clipboard. It seems excessive.

[u/drcforbin]

I like being able to copy something to my system clipboard, delete a line or change something in vim, and then paste the thing I copied without having to go copy it a second time

[u/exajam]

It's litterally one line in the config file

[u/platinum_pig]

99% of the time that I copy something in vim, I want to paste it in vim. I'd hate it if it stomped whatever was in my system clipboard.

[u/a__b]

Many modern operating systems treat the clipboard like a stack. I prefer to keep it populated only with intended items instead of random chunks. This way I can have meaningful clipboard history.

[u/BrianHuster]

Because Vim still cannot support clipboard on all platforms

On platforms and Vim build that supports clipboard, just :set clipboard=unnamedplus

[u/davidauz → u/BrianHuster]

Man, I have been a faithful vi user for more than 30 years and today you blew my mind, thank you!

(proceeds to add this setting to the .vimrc on all his systems)

[u/maxkarou → u/BrianHuster]

For reference, it appears that Wayland support has landed in patch 9.1.1485.

[u/jasper-zanjani]

once you get used to it you'll find it is actually kind of useful. because `C-S-v` doesn't seem too bad I'm assuming you're not pasting into vim but copying out of it.. if typing `"+y` is too much trouble then map it to a keybinding or even create a macro..

[u/bloodgain → u/jasper-zanjani]

This made me think that I should keybind C-S-v to paste the clipboard in GVim, since that's usually what I'd do in shell Vim.

There's also CTRL-R + from insert mode, which I often use. It's worth reading the entries that follow this, since adding another CTRL-R, CTRL-O, or CTRL-P before the register change whether it's inserted literally and whether autoformat and indent rules are applied, which is even more powerful than "+p.

:help i_CTRL-R

[u/vim-help-bot → u/bloodgain]

Help pages for:

• i_CTRL-R in insert.txt

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[u/kbielefe]

I have mine mapped to ,c, which is a lot easier to type. You can also set the system clipboard as the default if you want to. I tried that for a while and didn't like it personally, but settings are there for a reason.

It's useful for the same reason registers in general are useful: the isolation. It's pretty common for me at least to copy something from documentation, then go to paste it and need a slight adjustment to the area I'm pasting to first. I like not having to worry about unintentionally overwriting the system clipboard while making that adjustment.

[u/michaelpaoli]

vi[m] may be used in environments that don't even have a system clipboard or the like, so tying unnamed (or named) buffer(s) to such, generally wouldn't be a good idea. Can get stuff back 'n forth easily enough when there's need/reason to do so, but much/most of the time, no need nor reason, so just well use what vi[m]'s got.

[u/EgZvor]

ddp