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

Luc Hermitte's solution works like a charm. I was using it for about a week or so. Then I discovered a solution from Steve Losh's .vimrc that works nicely if YankRing is part of your plugin/bundle lineup:

function! YRRunAfterMaps()                                                                                                      
    " From Steve Losh, Preserve the yank post selection/put.    
    vnoremap p :YRPaste 'p', 'v'gv:YRYankRange 'v' 
endfunction