How to flip the lines of a visual selection in vim?

Question

I want to take a visual selection and flip it so that the first line of the selection is on the bottom. From:

The
wheels
go
round.


        

Answer 1

When you make a visual selection Vim automatically makes the bookmarks '< and '> at the start and end of the block respectively, so you can do what you want in a couple of ways.

In normal mode: '>dd'

As an ex command: :'>d | '<-1 put

NB the bookmarks remain after you exit visual mode, so you do not have to stay in visual mode to use these.

edit:

Oops, I misread the question and thought you only wanted the last line put at the start, but you want the entire block reversed. The simplest solution if you are on a unix system:

:'<,'>!tac

This pipes the lines through the unix 'reverse cat' program.