How to edit blocks in vim without visual block mode

Question

Is there a way to edit a vertical block in a code without using the visual block mode selection?

Answer 1

What's so bad about blockwise visual mode?! There's no practical alternative to it.

• You could use :substitute with atoms like \%>v, \%<v, \%>l and \%<l to limit the pattern match to a rectangular block, but that's very tedious.
• There are some multi-edit plugins (inspired by other editors) that allow you to select some areas, and then simultaneously edit them all.
• For special purposes, you could write a scriptlet / mapping with getline() / setline() and String manipulation in Vimscript.

Answer 2

In addition to Ingo's answer, I'll add this: Ex commands are line-wise by design. The nature of the visual mode doesn't matter: Ex commands will always use the first line and the last line of your selection as range by default anyway.

Because it's not line-wise, visual-block mode and block "thinking" doesn't really align with Ex commands.

Answer 3

You can do something similar to this recent answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22238813/3130080

For example,

:%s/\%6c/x/

will insert "x" before the 6'th character in each line, and

:1,2s/\%>1c\%<4c.//g

will delete characters 2 and 3 in lines 1 and 2.

:help /\%c