Practical Vim

Tip 91

Replace with the Contents of a Register

We don’t have to type out the replacement string by hand. If the text already exists in the document, we can yank it into a register and use it in the replacement field. Then we can pass the contents of a register either by value or by reference.

In Tip 90, we saw that Vim makes an intelligent assumption when we leave the search field of the substitute command blank. It’s tempting to think that leaving the replacement field blank would also reuse the string from the previous substitute command, but this isn’t the case. Instead, a blank replacement field instructs the substitute command to replace each match with an empty string. In other words, it deletes each match.

Pass by Value

We can insert ...