Copy and paste between sessions using a temporary file
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Tip 1268 Previous Next Created: June 21, 2006 Complexity: basic Author: brudermarkus Version: 5.7
Sometimes I need to copy and paste stuff between Vim sessions. There are some proposals on how to do this with the clipboard, but here is an alternative (should work for any OS):
- Hit Ctrl+C to copy the current line or current visual selection (it will be saved to the file ~/.vbuf).
- Hit Ctrl+V to paste the contents of the previous copy action.
These mappings work in "normal" and "visual" mode.
"custom copy'n'paste "copy the current visual selection to ~/.vbuf vmap <C-c> :w! ~/.vbuf<CR> "copy the current line to the buffer file if no visual selection nmap <C-c> :.w! ~/.vbuf<CR> "paste the contents of the buffer file nmap <C-v> :r ~/.vbuf<CR>
[edit] Comments
Registers are stored in the viminfo file. Isn't this a more functional approach? See :help viminfo, :help 21.3.
Extremely useful - I use a variation of this every day: VimTip66
This is fine when you're on a system that maps copy and paste to ctrl-c or ctrl-v.
By default Vim doesn't do that. There's overrides to allow it to do so on Mac and Windows which makes Vim think I want to quit or then messes up the ability to do column selections on Linux.
I prefer sticking with the "+Y and "*Y methods to yank into standard registers. Those work consistently on Vim on Linux, Mac and Windows.
