Pasting inside delimiters without using visual selection

Question

In Vim, let\'s say I want to replace the contents of one String with the content of another.

Original input

var1 = \"January\"
var2          


        

Answer 1

Excerpt from my .vimrc:

" Delete to 'black hole' register
nnoremap <leader>d "_d
vnoremap <leader>d "_d

So, you just need to \di"P as your last step (assuming you use \ as a <leader>).

Answer 2

I need this so often, I wrote a plugin to simplify and allow maximum speed: ReplaceWithRegister.

This plugin offers a two-in-one gr command that replaces text covered by a {motion} / text object, entire line(s) or the current selection with the contents of a register; the old text is deleted into the black-hole register, i.e. it's gone. It transparently handles many corner cases and allows for a quick repeat via the standard . command. Should you not like it, its page has links to alternatives.

Answer 3

There are many ways of doing this however using visual mode is the easiest.

• Use the black hole register to delete the content then paste. e.g. "_di"P
• Do ci"<c-r>0. <c-r> inserts the contents of a register
• Simply paste and then move over a character and delete the old text. e.g pldt"

However visual mode still has my vote. I find that the concerns most people have is that using visual mode + paste is that the default register is swap with the selected text and it doesn't repeat well. Good news everybody! The 0 register always stores the last yank. The bad news is visual mode still doesn't repeat well. Take a look at this vimcast episode, Pasting from Visual mode, for more information. It mentions a few plugin that help with this.

Answer 4

It's not particularly pretty, but here goes:

1. Go to line one and yi"
2. Move to line two
3. Type "_di"hp

That deletes what's in the quotes, but sends the deleted text to a black hole register. Then it moves the cursor back one, and pastes what you yanked from line one.

All in all, you can start on the first line and type yi"j"_di"hp. Why is it that people find vim intimidating? ;)

Alternatively, yank the first line as normal, then drop to line two and type ci"<Ctrl+p> and select the previously yanked text from the menu.

Answer 5

There is a plugin that addresses this problem precisely. It was presumably born out of the same feeling you're feeling, namely that Visual mode often feels less than ideal to advanced Vim users.

operator-replace – Operator to replace text with register content

With operator-replace installed the replacing goes like this.

1. Yank the word inside the quotes.

   yi"
   

2. Move to the target line

   j
   

3. Replace inside the quotes with the yanked text. (I've set up gr as the replace operator: :map gr <Plug>(operator-replace). Pick your own mapping.)

   gri"
   

Check it out! This is part of the truly excellent textobj/operator frameworks. I couldn't work without them.