Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 62

Replace a Visual Selection with a Register

When used from Visual mode, Vim’s put command has some unusual qualities. We’ll find out how these can be exploited in this tip.

When we use the p command in Visual mode, Vim replaces the selection with the contents of the specified register (see v_pⓘ). We can exploit this feature to solve our problem from ​Oops! I Clobbered My Yank​:

Keystrokes	Buffer Contents
yiw	collection = getCollection(); process(somethingInTheWay, target);
jww	collection = getCollection(); process(somethingInTheWay, target);
ve	collection = getCollection(); process(somethingInTheWay, target);
p	collection = getCollection(); process(collection, target);

For this particular problem, this is my favorite solution. ...