Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 19

Overwrite Existing Text with Replace Mode

Replace mode is identical to Insert mode, except that it overwrites existing text in the document.

Suppose that we had an excerpt of text such as this:

insert_mode/replace.txt

Typing in Insert mode extends the line. But in Replace mode
the line length doesn't change.

Instead of using two separate sentences, we’re going to run this together into a single sentence by changing the period to a comma. We also have to downcase the “B” in the word “But.” This example shows how we could do this using Replace mode.

Keystrokes	Buffer Contents
{start}	Typing in Insert mode extends the line. But in Replace mode the line length doesn't change.
f.	Typing in Insert mode extends the line. But in Replace ...