Select entire line in VIM, without the new line character

Question

Which is the shortest way to select an entire line without the new line character in VIM?

I know that SHIFT + v selects the entire line

Answer 1

No, there is nothing built-in that does the job. That's why people have even created plugins to address the need.

Probably the most popular choice is textobj-line. With textobj-line you get two new text objects, al "a line" and il "inner line". Then,

• vil selects the printable contents of the line (like ^vg_),
• val selects the entire line contents (like 0v$h).

Both do not include the newline in the selection.

Pretty handy plugin if you ask me. And it works with operators, too.

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By request, the installation:

• With plain Vim:
  1. Get the latest textobj-user and extract its directories into ~/.vim.
  2. Get the latest textobj-line and extract its directories into ~/.vim.
  3. Generate the help tags :helptags ~/.vim/doc.
• With a plugin manager (recommended): just follow the usual installation procedure for your plugin manager, and don't forget to install the textobj-user dependency as well.