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's function worked well for me after I made a change to support the fact that I have clipboard=unnamed set:

function! RestoreRegister()
    let @" = s:restore_reg
    if &clipboard == "unnamed"
        let @* = s:restore_reg
    endif
    return ''
endfunction