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'<P

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.

Answer 2

Further to Dave Kirby's answer and addressing the "how to do this simply" requirement, you could create a shortcut in your .vimrc file. The following example maps the F5 key to this shortcut:

map <F5> :'<,'>!tail -r<CR>

or for OS X:

map <F5> :'<,'>!tac<CR>

Answer 3

According to :help 12.4 you can mark the first line with the mt, move to the last line you want reversed then use the command :'t+1,.g/^/m 't

Answer 4

For those more comfortable with Visual Mode:
1. Identify the line number above the selection you want flipped using :set nu.
2. Use Shift-V to highlight selection you want flipped (visual mode).
3. :g/^/m <Line number from step 1>.

Note that in visual mode it will automatically show up as :'<,'>g/^/m <Line number> when you type in the command from 3.

This command works by moving the selection one line at a time into the line number that you give it. When the second item gets pushed into the line number given, it pushes the first down to line number + 1. Then the third pushes the first and second down and so on until the entire list has been pushed into the single line number resulting in a reverse ordered list.