[vim] Copy-paste between two vim sessions

These three methods may be used to copy some text in the vim buffer, which may then be pasted in another vim session. All the operations in vim are done in the normal mode.

Method 1:
1. "f3yy — yank 3 lines into buffer f
2. go to the other file opened using vim
2. "fp — paste the contents of buffer f

Method 2:
1. :100,200ya f — yank lines 100 through 200 to buffer f
2. go to the other file opened using vim
3. :pu f — paste the contents of buffer f

Method 3: (visual mode)
1. Select the code using any of v, V, or ^V
2.Copy into the X clipboard: "*y
3.Switch to the other vim
4. "*p

[cli] Line editing in bash

Although this blog serves as my personal notebook, however, since I’m putting this on the internet, I should humbly cite the reference here first. Most of the tricks are from the above reference, arranged according to my need. These are mostly Mac OSX terminal specific line-editing commands, but  should work in any other terminal running bash, as well.

[NB: If you don't have a META key, then ESC may be used to replace it: e.g., to get the same functionality as META+t, first hit ESC then the letter t. In my mac, I did not have a META key by default. However, I've just found a solution (Google is your friend!) --- go to terminal preferences, then select the keyboard tab and check "Use option as meta key"]

Cursor movement

CTRL+a

Move cursor to beginning of the line.

CTRL+e

Move cursor to the end.

CTRL+f

Move forward one character. Identical to →.

CTRL+b

Move backward one character. Identical to ←.

META+f

Move forward one word.

META+b

Move backward one word.

CTRL+x CTRL+x

Mark current location in line and jump to beginning of line or second mark if defined. Repeat to jump to between both marks.

Cutting

CTRL+k

Delete everything from under the cursor to the end of the line. (I think of this as killing the rest of my line.)

CTRL+u

Delete everything from under the cursor the beginning of the line.

CTRL+w

Delete from under the cursor to the beginning of the word.

CTRL+d

Forward delete.

CTRL+h

Backspace.

Pasting/Inserting/Undoing

CTRL+y

Paste the most previously-deleted string. Basically a sort of command-line editting “undo.”

CTRL+_

Incremental undo.

META+r

Undo all the changes

CTRL+v

Insert next character verbatim. This is how you escape control sequences. For instance, to literally insert

^[, press ESC.

CTRL+j

Carriage return. Identical to hitting the return key.

CTRL+m

Newline. Identical to return.

Swapping

CTRL+t

Transpose (swap) the two characters before the cursor with one another.

META+t

Transpose (swap) the two words before the cursor with one another.

Changing case

META+c

Capitalize word under cursor and move to next word.

META+u

Uppercase word under cursor and move to next word.

META+l

Lowercase word under cursor and move to next word.

Auto-completion

META+.

Insert last word from previous command after cursor.

TAB

Auto-completes file, folder, and program names.

META+?

List the possible completions

CTRL+x /

List the possible filename completions

META+/

Attempt filename completion

CTRL+x ~

List the possible variable completions

META+~

Attempt username completion

CTRL+x $

List the possible variable completions

META+$

Attempt variable completion

CTRL+x @

List the possible hostname completion

META+@

Attempt hostname completion

CTRL+x !

List the possible command completions

META+!

Attempt command completion

META+TAB

Attempt completion from previous commands in the history list

CTRL+p

Recall previous command executed. Identical to ↑.

Various

CTRL+z

Stop the current process and send it to the background.

CTRL+c

Send an SIG_HUP to the current process.

CTRL+d

Send an end-of-file special character to the current process. Doing this at the command line is identical to closing your terminal window.

CTRL+l

Repaint screen.

Keyboard macros (link)

CTRL+x (

Start a macro

CTRL+x )

End macro

CTRL+x e

Execute last macro.

Using vi inbuilt
However, the sweetest of all is if you set the vim inbuilt (either in ~/.bashrc or in the command line), you can actually use the most of the functionalities of vi in the command line
set -o vi
It’s in the insert mode by default; in order to go to the command mode, hit ESC!
You may also want to add
bind -m vi-command -r 'v'
to your ~/.bashrc so that you are not taken to a blank file every time you hit v in the command mode.

You may add the following in ~/.inputrc so that vi is always accessible
set editing-mode vi

History. If you’re using vi inbuilt you may also want to know how to browse through history: that’s easy too — just press j (to go up) and k (to go down) in history in command mode, just like regular vi.

File/directory name completion. Type the beginning characters of the file, hit escape followed by \ (backslash). However, the backslash will take you to insert the next character if it cannot uniquely identify the file.

Here's the link for the commandline vi completion tricks.

NB: TAB-completion works fine in the insert mode.

[scp] Vi(ew) remotely!

You can view a file in the remote machine using vim (or vi) or compare it with a local file using vimdiff by just using scp:
vi scp://kousik@remote.server//home/kousik/remote-file

vimdiff scp://kousik@remote.server//home/kousik/remote-file local-file

You could have copied the remote-file to the local machine first, but this way you don’t have to do it explicitly.

By the way, sftp also works fine.