Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 29

Duplicate or Move Lines Using ‘:t’ and ‘:m’ Commands

The :copy command (and its shorthand :t) lets us duplicate one or more lines from one part of the document to another, while the :move command lets us place them somewhere else in the document.

For demonstration purposes, we’ll use this shopping list:

cmdline_mode/shopping-list.todo

Shopping list
    Hardware Store
        Buy new hammer
    Beauty Parlor
        Buy nail polish remover
        Buy nails

Duplicate Lines with the ‘:t’ Command

Our shopping list is incomplete: we also need to buy nails at the hardware store. To fix the list, we’ll reuse the last line of the file, creating a copy of it below “Hardware Store.” We can easily do so using the :copy Ex command:

Keystrokes	Buffer Contents
{start} ...