How to access old entries of Vim Clipboard?

Question

When I want to copy a line and paste it in the current line after deleting the current line's contents, I end up pasting the same line that was deleted as the clipboard entry gets changed after pressing d

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited May 25 '16 at 14:37

9

You can access the previous content of the unnamed register with registers "1 to "9:

"3p

Register "0 always contains the last explicit yank:

"0p

And you can yank to a named register "a to "z. If you want to save a snippet for later, using named registers is a very good idea:

"ey
"ep

See :help registers.

edited May 25 '16 at 14:37

Lieven Keersmaekers

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answered May 25 '16 at 11:31

romainl

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So where does the second last yank gets stored? Seems it is not stored in 1 for me? – spharish May 26 '16 at 13:58
Woo, yanking to named registers is exactly what I was after but seldom mentioned in posts about yank registers. `"py` and `"pp` are my new favourite (n)vim commands :) – htaccess Sep 19 '22 at 21:53

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 26 '16 at 19:42

3

In addition to the information given about registers already, you can type

:reg

to get a list of what is currently stored in all of the registers.

You can then use the 2-character code that is displayed on the left (beginning with a " eg. "2) followed by pwhile in normal mode to paste the contents of that register.

answered May 26 '16 at 19:42

Shinkawa91

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Is there a way to know the register contents without typing :reg, like most recent in 0, second most recent in 1, etc. Because I often need the second most recent value? – spharish May 27 '16 at 03:54
I'm unsure about yanks, but deleted content will be stored in successive registers. So `"0` will always contain the last yank (unless another register was specified). `"1` will contain the contents of the last delete or change command. If you make another delete after this, the contents of register `"1` move to `"2`, and the recently deleted content moves to `"1`. – Shinkawa91 May 27 '16 at 11:13

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 25 '16 at 11:28

2

To replace the current line with whatever is in the clipboard, you can select that line and paste. ie do a

Shiftvp

answered May 25 '16 at 11:28

sudo bangbang

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How to access old entries of Vim Clipboard?

3 Answers3