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 <F10> :<c-u>call Save_visually_selected_text_to_file()<cr>

Answer 2

Select the text you wish to save, in either line visual or block visual mode, and

:w new.txt

That's what you type, but you won't actually see exactly what's above. When you press :, you'll go to the command line which will automatically get filled in with selection information. It'll look something like this:

:'<,'>

Just carry on typing the rest (w new.txt) to get

:'<,'>w new.txt

...and press enter.

Answer 3

With the block is selected, you can :'<,'>w other-file, which will write only the selected block to other-file. Hitting : in visual mode should place '<,'> into the command line for you already, so you really only have to type :w other-file.

Answer 4

There's probably a simpler way to do this, but what I would do is create a new buffer (or tab) and then paste it in with p. You can create a new buffer with :new or a new tab with :tabnew. You can write the buffer/tab to a file as normal with :w filename.

Answer 5

Like @dronus mentioned in the comments, the :w !pbcopy suggestions does not copy correctly because it copies the entire line. If I want to copy only the url in a line, I will not be able to. Here's a line that you can add to your .vimrc file so that everytime you hit CTRL-C, the selected line in your vim will be copied to clipboard:

map <C-c> y:e ~/clipsongzboard<CR>P:w !pbcopy<CR><CR>:bdelete!<CR>

If you'd like to read details about what this does, you can read about this on my blog

Its the same implementation as what @rmeador suggested.

Answer 6

Similar to @songz's solution, I prefer do it like this using ":new"

vmap <C-c> y:new ~/.vimbuf<CR>VGp:x<CR>:!pbcopy < ~/.vimbuf<CR><CR>