How to clear vim registers effectively?

Question

Registers in vim are a great feature to store text snippets and even to run commands on the text stored within them. However, I\'m a tidy person and tend to clean things up when

Answer 1

For the sake of completeness, I'll note that while setting a register to contain an empty string doesn't remove the register from the output of the :registers command, Vim does not save registers which have been cleared in this way to the .viminfo file.

Therefore, one other quick-and-dirty alternative for removing specific registers from the list is to clear them using either of the commands you suggest, and then restart Vim.

Answer 2

Another option is to never load any registers. As others have said, registers are loaded from .viminfo. The -i flag is used to specify what viminfo file to use. If you specify NONE, no viminfo, and therefore no registers will be loaded.

vim -i NONE

Answer 3

Remove .viminfo file or delete the register line in the .viminfo file.

You can get the details from Here:

The viminfo file is used to store:
- The command line history.
- The search string history.
- The input-line history.
- Contents of non-empty registers.
- Marks for several files.
- File marks, pointing to locations in files.
- Last search/substitute pattern (for 'n' and '&').
- The buffer list.
- Global variables

Answer 4

Since that venerable answer on the mailing list, linked by @romainl, we have setreg('a', []) that clears the register.

Thus, the code could become:

let regs=split('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789/-"', '\zs')
for r in regs
  call setreg(r, [])
endfor

Answer 5

It is possible to set a value for each used register, similar to romainl's approach:

function! ClearRegisters()
   redir => l:register_out
   silent register
   redir end
   let l:register_list = split(l:register_out, '\n')
   call remove(l:register_list, 0) " remove header (-- Registers --)
   call map(l:register_list, "substitute(v:val, '^.\\(.\\).*', '\\1', '')")
   call filter(l:register_list, 'v:val !~ "[%#=.:]"') " skip readonly registers
   for elem in l:register_list
      execute 'let @'.elem.'= ""'
   endfor
endfunction

This avoids including additional register on the output of :registers

Answer 6

Put this in your .vimrc:

command! WipeReg for i in range(34,122) | silent! call setreg(nr2char(i), []) | endfor

and clear every register with :WipeReg

If you would like that to happen every time you start Vim also add:

autocmd VimEnter * WipeReg