How can I save a text block in visual mode to a file in Vim?

Question

The title is very descriptive. Just in case, I will give an example:

START BLOCK1
something
END BLOCK1

START BLOCK2
something
somenthing...
END BLOCK2
         


        

Answer 1

Vim get the visual selection and save to a file:

function! Get_visual_selection()
    #Get the position of left start visual selection
    let [line_start, column_start] = getpos("'<")[1:2]
    #Get the position of right end visual selection
    let [line_end, column_end] = getpos("'>")[1:2]
    #gotta catch them all.
    let lines = getline(line_start, line_end)
    if len(lines) == 0
        return ''
    endif
    #edge cases and cleanup.
    let lines[-1] = lines[-1][: column_end - 2]
    let lines[0] = lines[0][column_start - 1:]
    return join(lines, "\n")
endfunction

function Save_visually_selected_text_to_file()
    let selected_text = Get_visual_selection()
    call writefile(split(selected_text, "\n"), "/tmp/something.txt")
endfunction

#the c-u does a union of all lines in visual selection.
#this goes in the vimrc
vnoremap  :call Save_visually_selected_text_to_file()