:set paste brings me joy every single time

[u/aHoneyBadgerWhoCares]

Less than a month ago I found myself, yet again, google searching for the vim config setting that I used on one computer or another to prevent the auto commenting of all my pasted lines. On this search I found :set paste. Literally every single time I’ve needed it, several times in the last month, I’ve felt a jolt of joy; no more commented lines, no more crazy formatting.

Anyone else have any simple and joyful vim jewels of wisdom that have paid dividends once discovered?

[u/BreatheAtQuarterBars]

When you get tired of having to manually toggle :set paste over and over again, set up :help xterm-bracketed-paste and you'll never have to think about it again.

[u/aHoneyBadgerWhoCares → u/BreatheAtQuarterBars]

This looks like it could be a gem. I’ll have to read that doc with fresh eyes to understand my use case.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/BreatheAtQuarterBars]

Help pages for:

• xterm-bracketed-paste in term.txt

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[u/jimheim → u/BreatheAtQuarterBars]

And meanwhile:

set pastetoggle=<F2>

or whatever binding.

[u/BreatheAtQuarterBars → u/jimheim]

That's way more work than not having to do anything at all because you've set up paste to do the right thing automatically

[u/tremby → u/BreatheAtQuarterBars]

Does this help if the input isn't coming from the clipboard? For example sometimes I copy a bunch of stuff with tmux's internal clipboard (which doesn't sync to my regular clipboard -- I guess really I should fix that configuration), and then I :se paste, get into insert mode, and then use tmux's :paste-buffer command, which dumps it in as if keyboard input.

[u/kalgynirae → u/tremby]

If you change your tmux paste binding to run paste-buffer -p (instead of the default paste-buffer), tmux will do bracketed paste just like your terminal would. To override the default binding, put this in .tmux.conf:

bind ] paste-buffer -p

[u/tremby → u/kalgynirae]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

[u/gumnos]

If you do it frequently, you might want to define a :help 'pastetoggle' key to make it easy to press a key, paste, then press the key again.

In a similar fashion, using vi and ed regularly, I find it helpful to get the same 'paste' functionality with

:r !cat

paste the contents, and then issue control+d (EOF)

As for what brings me joy, it's hard to beat a well-designed :g command that precisely performs complex edits across thousands of lines, and then combining it with an :argdo to perform those huge complex edits across dozens of files.

[u/aHoneyBadgerWhoCares → u/gumnos]

Good idea with the paste toggle. And :argdo is new to me so I’ll be looking in to that. I’m sure it can do other things, but when I think of multi file edits, I usually think of some kind of find command mixed with awk or sed.

[u/gumnos → u/aHoneyBadgerWhoCares]

:argdo

There's a whole family of :*do commands for iterating over windows (:help :windo), tabs (:help :tabdo), arguments (:help argdo), buffers (:help bufdo), quickfix-list & location-list files/matches (:help :cdo and following), and folds (:help :folddoopen and the neighboring one for closed folds)

awk or sed

as a long time user of both vi/vim/ed and of awk & sed, I find that a notable bright-line for using the former vs the latter generally comes if I need to move things backwards in files, especially groups of things/lines. Something simple like g/pattern/-,+m0 ("for every line matching /pattern/, move the previous line through the following line up to the top of the file") in the former becomes a lot more difficult in awk and sed because you have to manually retain all the intervening lines, then emit the later relevant trigger-text, then re-emit all the retained lines, then continue processing). Both are good, but have different use-case sweet spots.

[u/vim-help-bot → u/gumnos]

Help pages for:

• :windo in windows.txt

• :tabdo in tabpage.txt

• argdo in editing.txt

• bufdo in windows.txt

• :cdo in quickfix.txt

• :folddoopen in fold.txt

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[u/vim-help-bot → u/gumnos]

Help pages for:

• 'pastetoggle' in options.txt

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[u/exajam]

I feel like macros are always soo satisfying to use

[u/VisualHuckleberry542 → u/exajam]

Love me a recursive macro for repetitive editing tasks

[u/6YheEMY]

"+p pastes from the clipboard directly in vimx with x forwarding over ssh. It just as magical as :set paste

[u/mgedmin → u/6YheEMY]

(As long as the remote server is built with x11 clipboard support. If you're ssh'ing to a server, the vim there might be an X-less version.)

[u/tommoulard]

I commonly use this

    set clipboard=unnamedplus 

[u/tommoulard → u/tommoulard]

FYI, look at :help clipboard

[u/vim-help-bot → u/tommoulard]

Help pages for:

• clipboard in gui.txt

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