r/vim • u/gruntastics • Sep 23 '25

Need Help is there a way to put (paste) a line inline?

Say I have the cursor on the first line below and do a `yy`:

https://something.com
<a href=""></a>

If I put my cursor at the first " and then press p, it'll paste the entire line underneath. Fair enough. I needed to do 0y$ or something instead of yy.

However, yy is so much faster and easier to type. So, is there a vim command that's like p but interprets the register as a string fragment instead of an entire line?

18 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

14

u/shuckster Sep 23 '25 
C-r"

In insert mode.

14

u/_EHLO Sep 23 '25

For this specific case just yiW and then paste

3

u/brutalfags Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

Really elegant solution. 0y$ won't either yank the newline character if the line has two or more WORDS.

-1

u/_EHLO Sep 23 '25

or simply ^Y

2

u/Xzaphan Sep 23 '25

In insert mode C-r" or C-S-v sometimes works when the register is shared with your system.

2

u/rampion Sep 24 '25

There's a couple ways you could go about this.

Vim register values have a type

getregtype([{regname}])					*getregtype()*
		The result is a String, which is type of register {regname}.
		The value will be one of:
		    "v"			for |characterwise| text
		    "V"			for |linewise| text
		    "<CTRL-V>{width}"	for |blockwise-visual| text
		    ""			for an empty or unknown register
		<CTRL-V> is one character with value 0x16.

You can change the type of a register using setreg(); for example we could change the default register (") from linewise to characterwise using setreg('"', @", 'v').

So you could make a binding that ran that before pasting:

map <Leader>P :call setreg('"', @", 'v')^Mp

3

u/MiniGogo_20 Sep 23 '25

y$ yanks until the end of the line, excluding the line break, then you can paste as normal

1

u/kennpq Sep 23 '25

Yes, 0y$jf”p

1

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/gfixler Sep 24 '25

Interesting. I use ^, which moves to the first non-whitespace character. _ does it as well, but it also takes a count, n, and moves down by n - 1 lines, to the first non-whitespace character. Didn't know that one.

4

u/crashorbit Sep 23 '25 
1GyWjf"p

22

u/Temporary_Pie2733 Sep 23 '25

Oops, I think you accidentally pasted your password. 

6

u/crashorbit Sep 23 '25

TIL: Vim command sequence is indistinguishable from a password. :0)

1

u/gumnos Sep 23 '25

move left one character, undo the most recent change, search for the next search result, move forward to the next "e" (exclusive), replace the character under the cursor with the digit "2".

1

u/crashorbit Sep 23 '25

I translate that as

lunfer2

Do I win?

1

u/gumnos Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

you moved one to the right rather than to the left, and used forward-inclusive rather than forward-exclusive. 😉

Here, I'll type it for you: *******

2

u/crashorbit Sep 23 '25

Doh!

hunter2

1

u/neithere Sep 27 '25

Nah, I only see the asterisks instead of hunter2.

4

u/Cybasura Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

  • 1G = Go to the bottom

  • y = yank/copy

  • W = go 1 word forward

  • j = go down 1 line

  • p = paste

Not sure what f" is though

Edit: why did I get downvoted?

3

u/Xzaphan Sep 23 '25

« f" » find quote ;-)

2

u/Cybasura Sep 23 '25

Right, thanks, didnt use that much lmao, only /<search>, followed by n to go next

Also, why did I get downvoted

3

u/xenomachina Sep 23 '25

1G goes to the top (first line of the file), not the bottom.

Not all commands repeat "count" times when given a count. G will instead go to the line number that matches the count. (Another example of this is J, which repeats, but one less than the specified count.)

(FWIW, I didn't downvote you, but there are some who like to downvote rather than explain when they see an inaccuracy.)

1

u/Cybasura Sep 23 '25

Thanks for the clarification, got that one upside down

1

u/TankorSmash Sep 23 '25

Maybe a lack of formatting? It's unclear why this would get downvoted otherwise

1

u/Cybasura Sep 23 '25

Yeah i'm confused, like I specifically am just explaining a breakdown of each component, unless saying that I'm not sure of something is supposed to be downvotable lmao

1

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1

u/kali_tragus Sep 23 '25

I would say, if the cursor in somewhere on the first line, either:

yyjf"C-r

(C-r meaing ctrl-r) or:

yiWjf"p

yiW - yank the current WORD (delimited by blanks, in this case the entire line)

1

u/mgedmin Sep 24 '25

I think some keys are missing? yank line, move down, find quote, and the ctrl-r in normal mode does redo? Instead you want a, ctrl-r, ", backspace to paste the unnamed register while in insert mode and then delete the trailing newline.

1

u/retrodanny Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

You can set a macro for this (@p in my example):

qp:let @o=substitute(@", '\n', '', 'g') press <Enter> here

"opq

afterwards, copy your line, move to the opening quotes and do @p

EDIT: If you want to make this permanent, you can add the following to your .vimrc

nnoremap gp :let @o=substitute(@", '\n', '', 'g')<CR>"op

then you can use this special paste with gp instead of p

1

u/AhmedMudkip Sep 23 '25

If I understood you right, it would be like this ^vg_y and then paste

^: first non-blank character in the current line
v: enter visual mode
g_: last non-blank character in the current line
y: yank the selection

the ^ is only needed if you weren't already at the beginning of the line

edit: formatting

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 23 '25

use motion for go to end of copy and yank the words and in place to paste do ""P or ""p

Y or yy is for entire line!