How to paste over without overwriting register

Question

Does anyone know of a way to paste over a visually selected area without having the selection placed in the default register?

I know I can solve the problem by alway

Answer 1

Use the following:

xnoremap p pgvy

this will reselect and re-yank any text that is pasted in visual mode.

Edit: in order this to work with "xp you can do:

xnoremap p pgv"@=v:register.'y'

v:register expands to the last register name used in a normal mode command.