How to paste yanked text into the Vim command line

Yes. Hit Ctrl-R then ". If you have literal control characters in what you have yanked, use Ctrl-R, Ctrl-O, ".

Here is an explanation of what you can do with registers. What you can do with registers is extraordinary, and once you know how to use them you cannot live without them.

Registers are basically storage locations for strings. Vim has many registers that work in different ways:

0 (yank register: when you use y in normal mode, without specifying a register, yanked text goes there and also to the default register),

1 to 9 (shifting delete registers, when you use commands such as c or d, what has been deleted goes to register 1, what was in register 1 goes to register 2, etc.),

" (default register, also known as unnamed register. This is where the " comes in Ctrl-R, "),

a to z for your own use (capitalized A to Z are for appending to corresponding registers).

_ (acts like /dev/null (Unix) or NUL (Windows), you can write to it but it's discarded and when you read from it, it is always empty),

- (small delete register),

/ (search pattern register, updated when you look for text with /, ?, * or # for instance; you can also write to it to dynamically change the search pattern),

: (stores last VimL typed command via Q or :, readonly),

+ and * (system clipboard registers, you can write to them to set the clipboard and read the clipboard contents from them)

See :help registers for the full reference.

You can, at any moment, use :registers to display the contents of all registers. Synonyms and shorthands for this command are :display, :reg and :di.

In Insert or Command-line mode, Ctrl-R plus a register name, inserts the contents of this register. If you want to insert them literally (no auto-indenting, no conversion of control characters like 0x08 to backspace, etc), you can use Ctrl-R, Ctrl-O, register name. See :help i_CTRL-R and following paragraphs for more reference.

But you can also do the following (and I probably forgot many uses for registers).

In normal mode, hit ":p. The last command you used in vim is pasted into your buffer. Let's decompose: " is a Normal mode command that lets you select what register is to be used during the next yank, delete or paste operation. So ": selects the colon register (storing last command). Then p is a command you already know, it pastes the contents of the register. cf. :help ", :help quote_:

You're editing a VimL file (for instance your .vimrc) and would like to execute a couple of consecutive lines right now: yj:@"Enter. Here, yj yanks current and next line (this is because j is a linewise motion but this is out of scope of this answer) into the default register (also known as the unnamed register). Then the :@ Ex command plays Ex commands stored in the register given as argument, and " is how you refer to the unnamed register. Also see the top of this answer, which is related. Do not confuse " used here (which is a register name) with the " from the previous example, which was a Normal-mode command. cf. :help :@ and :help quote_quote

Insert the last search pattern into your file in Insert mode, or into the command line, with Ctrl-R, /. cf. :help quote_/, help i_CTRL-R Corollary: Keep your search pattern but add an alternative: / Ctrl-R, / \|alternative.

You've selected two words in the middle of a line in visual mode, yanked them with y, they are in the unnamed register. Now you want to open a new line just below where you are, with those two words: :pu. This is shorthand for :put ". The :put command, like many Ex commands, works only linewise. cf. :help :put You could also have done: :call setreg('"', @", 'V') then p. The setreg function sets the register of which the name is given as first argument (as a string), initializes it with the contents of the second argument (and you can use registers as variables with the name @x where x is the register name in VimL), and turns it into the mode specified in the third argument, V for linewise, nothing for characterwise and literal ^V for blockwise. cf. :help setreg(). The reverse functions are getreg() and getregtype().

If you have recorded a macro with qa...q, then :echo @a will tell you what you have typed, and @a will replay the macro (probably you knew that one, very useful in order to avoid repetitive tasks) cf. :help q, help @ Corollary from the previous example: If you have 8go in the clipboard, then @+ will play the clipboard contents as a macro, and thus go to the 8th byte of your file. Actually this will work with almost every register. If your last inserted string was dd in Insert mode, then @. will (because the . register contains the last inserted string) delete a line. (Vim documentation is wrong in this regard, since it states that the registers #, %, : and . will only work with p, P, :put and Ctrl-R). cf. :help @ Don't confuse :@ (command that plays Vim commands from a register) and @ (normal-mode command that plays normal-mode commands from a register). Notable exception is @:. The command register does not contain the initial colon neither does it contain the final carriage return. However in Normal mode, @: will do what you expect, interpreting the register as an Ex command, not trying to play it in Normal mode. So if your last command was :e, the register contains e but @: will reload the file, not go to end of word. cf. :help @:

Show what you will be doing in Normal mode before running it: @='dd' Enter. As soon as you hit the = key, Vim switches to expression evaluation: as you enter an expression and hit Enter, Vim computes it, and the result acts as a register content. Of course the register = is read-only, and one-shot. Each time you start using it, you will have to enter a new expression. cf. :help quote_= Corollary: If you are editing a command, and you realize that you should need to insert into your command line some line from your current buffer: don't press Esc! Use Ctrl-R =getline(58) Enter. After that you will be back to command line editing, but it has inserted the contents of the 58th line.

Define a search pattern manually: :let @/ = 'foo' cf. :help :let Note that doing that, you needn't to escape / in the pattern. However you need to double all single quotes of course.

Copy all lines beginning with foo, and afterwards all lines containing bar to clipboard, chain these commands: qaq (resets the a register storing an empty macro inside it), :g/^foo/y A, :g/bar/y A, :let @+ = @a. Using a capital register name makes the register work in append mode Better, if Q has not been remapped by mswin.vim, start Ex mode with Q, chain those “colon commands” which are actually better called “Ex commands”, and go back to Normal mode by typing visual. cf. :help :g, :help :y, :help Q

Double-space your file: :g/^/put _. This puts the contents of the black hole register (empty when reading, but writable, behaving like /dev/null) linewise, after each line (because every line has a beginning!).

Add a line containing foo before each line: :g/^/-put ='foo'. This is a clever use of the expression register. Here, - is a synonym for .-1 (cf. :help :range). Since :put puts the text after the line, you have to explicitly tell it to act on the previous one.

Copy the entire buffer to the system clipboard: :%y+. cf. :help :range (for the % part) and :help :y.

If you have misrecorded a macro, you can type :let @a=' Ctrl-R =replace(@a,"'","''",'g') Enter ' and edit it. This will modify the contents of the macro stored in register a, and it's shown here how you can use the expression register to do that. Another, simpler, way of modifying a macro is to paste it in a buffer ("ap), edit it, and put it again into the register, by selecting it and "ay.

If you did dddd, you might do uu in order to undo. With p you could get the last deleted line. But actually you can also recover up to 9 deletes with the registers @1 through @9. Even better, if you do "1P, then . in Normal mode will play "2P, and so on. cf. :help . and :help quote_number

If you want to insert the current date in Insert mode: Ctrl-R=strftime('%y%m%d')Enter. cf. :help strftime()

Once again, what can be confusing:

:@ is a command-line command that interprets the contents of a register as vimscript and sources it

@ in normal mode command that interprets the contents of a register as normal-mode keystrokes (except when you use : register, that contains last played command without the initial colon: in this case it replays the command as if you also re-typed the colon and the final return key).

" in normal mode command that helps you select a register for yank, paste, delete, correct, etc.

" is also a valid register name (the default, or unnamed, register) and therefore can be passed as an arguments for commands that expect register names

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For pasting something that is the system clipboard you can just use SHIFT - INS.

It works in Windows, but I am guessing it works well in Linux too.

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"I'd like to paste yanked text into Vim command line."

While the top voted answer is very complete, I prefer editing the command history.

In normal mode, type: q:. This will give you a list of recent commands, editable and searchable with normal vim commands. You'll start on a blank command line at the bottom.

For the exact thing that the article asks, pasting a yanked line (or yanked anything) into a command line, yank your text and then: q:p (get into command history edit mode, and then (p)ut your yanked text into a new command line. Edit at will, enter to execute.

To get out of command history mode, it's the opposite. In normal mode in command history, type: :q + enter

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For pasting something from the system clipboard into the Vim command line ("command mode"), use Ctrl+R followed by +. For me, at least on Ubuntu, Shift+Ins is not working.

PS: I am not sure why Ctrl+R followed by *, which is theoretically the same as Ctrl+R followed by + doesn't seem to work always. I searched and discovered the + version and it seems to work always, at least on my box.

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It's worth noting also that the yank registers are the same as the macro buffers. In other words, you can simply write out your whole command in your document (including your pasted snippet), then "by to yank it to the b register, and then run it with @b.

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For context, this information comes from out-of-the-box, no plugins, no .vimrc Vim 7.4 behavior in Linux Mint with the default options.

You can always select text with the mouse (or using V or v and placing the selection in the "* register), and paste it into the command line with Shift + Ctrl + v.

Typing Ctrl + r in the command line will cause a prompt for a register name. so typing :CTRL-r* will place the content register * into the command line. It will paste any register, not just "*. See :help c_CTRL-R.

Furthermore, the middle mouse button will paste into the command line.

See :help->quote-plus for a description of the how X Window deals with selection. Even in a plain, out-of-the-box Vim (again, in Vim 7.4 in Linux Mint, anyway), any selection made with the left mouse button can be pasted in the command line with the middle mouse button.

In addition, the middle mouse button will also paste text selected in Vim into many other X Window applications, even GUI ones (for example, Firefox and Thunderbird) and pasting text into the command line is also possible where the text was selected from other apps.

See :help->x11-selection for addl information.

tl;dr

Try the :CTRL-r approach first, and then use Shift + Ctrl + v or the middle mouse button if you need something else.

It is conceded that it can be confusing.

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I was having a similar problem. I wanted the selected text to end up in a command, but not rely on pasting it in. Here's the command I was trying to write a mapping for:

:call VimuxRunCommand("python")

The docs for this plugin only show using string literals. The following will break if you try to select text that contains doublequotes:

vnoremap y:call VimuxRunCommand("<c-r>"")<cr>

To get around this, you just reference the contents of the macro using @ :

vnoremap y:call VimuxRunCommand(@")<cr>

Passes the contents of the unnamed register in and works with my double quote and multiline edgecases.

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"[a-z]y: Copy text to the [a-z] register Use :! to go to the edit command Ctrl + R: Follow the register identity to paste what you copy.

It used to CentOS 7.

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OS X

If you are using Vim in Mac OS X, unfortunately it comes with older version, and not complied with clipboard options. Luckily, Homebrew can easily solve this problem.

Install Vim:

brew install vim --with-lua --with-override-system-vi

Install the GUI version of Vim:

brew install macvim --with-lua --with-override-system-vi

Restart the terminal for it to take effect.

Append the following line to ~/.vimrc
set clipboard=unnamed

Now you can copy the line in Vim with yy and paste it system-wide.

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If you have two values yanked into two different registers (for example register a and register b) then you can simply set a variable c and do the operation on it.

For example, :set c = str2float(@a) + str2float(@b) and then you can paste the content of c anywhere.

For example whilst in INSERT mode, CTRL + R then type = to enter into the expression register and just type c after equal sign and hit ENTER. Done you should now have the total of a and b registers.

All these can be recorded in a macro and repeated over!

The str2float function is used if you are working with floats, if you don't, you will get integers instead.

I am not sure if this is idiomatic but it worked for my case where I needed to add 2 numbers in a row and repeat it for 500 more lines.

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I like to use Control-v to paste from the system clipboard, so I use:

cnoremap <C-v> <C-r>+

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