How to get visually selected text in VimScript

Question

I\'m able to get the cursor position with getpos(), but I want to retrieve the selected text within a line, that is \'<,\'>.

Answer 1

Modified version of @DarkWiiPlayer answer.

The differences are:

1. It test &selection to give the proper functionality when

:behave mswin

As well as the default:

:behave xterm

2. It also works properly for visual block selections testing visualmode()

I'm also returned the visual selection as an array of lines (becuase that is what I needed). However I've left the return join(lines, "\n") in commented out if you need a signal text block instead.

function! VisualSelection()
    if mode()=="v"
        let [line_start, column_start] = getpos("v")[1:2]
        let [line_end, column_end] = getpos(".")[1:2]
    else
        let [line_start, column_start] = getpos("'<")[1:2]
        let [line_end, column_end] = getpos("'>")[1:2]
    end

    if (line2byte(line_start)+column_start) > (line2byte(line_end)+column_end)
        let [line_start, column_start, line_end, column_end] =
        \   [line_end, column_end, line_start, column_start]
    end
    let lines = getline(line_start, line_end)
    if len(lines) == 0
            return ['']
    endif
    if &selection ==# "exclusive"
        let column_end -= 1 "Needed to remove the last character to make it match the visual selction
    endif
    if visualmode() ==# "\"
        for idx in range(len(lines))
            let lines[idx] = lines[idx][: column_end - 1]
            let lines[idx] = lines[idx][column_start - 1:]
        endfor
    else
        let lines[-1] = lines[-1][: column_end - 1]
        let lines[ 0] = lines[ 0][column_start - 1:]
    endif
    return lines  "use this return if you want an array of text lines
    "return join(lines, "\n") "use this return instead if you need a text block
endfunction