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

I don't like the default vim behavior of copying all text deleted with d, D, c, or C into the default register.

I've gotten around it by mapping d to "_d, c to "_c, and so on.

From my .vimrc:

"These are to cancel the default behavior of d, D, c, C
"  to put the text they delete in the default register.
"  Note that this means e.g. "ad won't copy the text into
"  register a anymore.  You have to explicitly yank it.
nnoremap d "_d
vnoremap d "_d
nnoremap D "_D
vnoremap D "_D
nnoremap c "_c
vnoremap c "_c
nnoremap C "_C
vnoremap C "_C

Answer 2

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 :<c-u>YRPaste 'p', 'v'<cr>gv:YRYankRange 'v'<cr> 
endfunction  

Answer 3

try -

:set guioptions-=a
:set guioptions-=A

Answer 4

In your .vimrc

xnoremap p "_dP

I found this from a response on a similar thread, but the original source was http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Replace_a_word_with_yanked_text. It mentions some drawbacks, however it works fine for me.