Vim: insert the same characters across multiple lines

Question

Sometimes I want to edit a certain visual block of text across multiple lines.

For example, I would take a text that looks like this:

name
comment
ph         


        

Answer 1

Updated January 2016

Whilst the accepted answer is a great solution, this is actually slightly fewer keystrokes, and scales better - based in principle on the accepted answer.

1. Move the cursor to the n in name.
2. Enter visual block mode (ctrlv).
3. Press 3j
4. Press I.
5. Type in vendor_.
6. Press esc.

Note, this has fewer keystrokes than the accepted answer provided (compare Step 3). We just count the number of j actions to perform.

If you have line numbers enabled (as illustrated above), and know the line number you wish to move to, then step 3 can be changed to #G where # is the wanted line number.

In our example above, this would be 4G. However when dealing with just a few line numbers an explicit count works well.

Answer 2

:%s/^/vendor_/

or am I missing something?

Answer 3

Suppose you have this file:

something

name
comment
phone
email

something else
and more ...

You want to add "vendor_" in front of "name", "comment", "phone", and "email", regardless of where they appear in the file.

:%s/\<\(name\|comment\|phone\|email\)\>/vendor_\1/gc

The c flag will prompt you for confirmation. You can drop that if you don't want the prompt.

Answer 4

1. Ctrl + v to go to visual block mode
2. Select the lines using the up and down arrow
3. Enter lowercase 3i (press lowercase I three times)
4. I (press capital I. That will take you into insert mode.)
5. Write the text you want to add
6. Esc
7. Press the down arrow

Answer 5

Use Ctrl+V to enter visual block mode
Move Up/Down to select the columns of text in the lines you want to comment.
Then hit Shift+i and type the text you want to insert.
Then hit Esc, wait 1 second and the inserted text will appear on every line

Answer 6

You might also have a use case where you want to delete a block of text and replace it.

Like this

Hello World

Hello World

To

Hello Cool

Hello Cool

You can just visual block select "World" in both lines.

Type c for change - now you will be in insert mode.

Insert the stuff you want and hit escape.

Both get reflected vertically. It works just like 'I', except that it replaces the block with the new text instead of inserting it.