SHIFTV puts you in select lines mode. Then "+y yanks the currently selected lines to the + register which is the clipboard. There are selection and drop registers3 different registers, for different purposes. See the section on selection and drop registers for details on the differences between * and + registers on Windows and Linux. Note that there is only a distinction between "* and "+ for X11 systems. Under MS-Windows, use of "* and "+ is actually synonymous and refers to the gui-clipboard. So, on windows * (sharp) register can be used as well: "selection and drop registers1y
will, ... uhmm, in short, whenever you select/yank something put it in the clipboard as well (not Vim's, but the global keyboard of the window system). That way you don't have to think about yanking things into a special register.
If you're on Linux and are using a VIm version 7.3.74 or higher (the version that gets installed in Ubuntu 11.10 onwards satisfies this), you can do
set clipboard=unnamedplus
which will place yanked text into the global clipboard, and allow you to paste from the global clipboard, without having to use any special registers. Unlike ldigas's solution, this will also work on non-gui versions of VIm.
For GVIM, hit v to go into visual mode; select text and hit Ctrl+Insert to copy selection into global clipboard.
From the menu you can see that the shortcut key is "+y i.e. hold Shift key, then press ", then + and then release Shift and press y (cumbersome in comparison to Shift+Insert).
If you are using vim in MAC OSX, unfortunately it comes with older verion, and not complied with clipboard options. Luckily, homebrew can easily solve this problem.
install vim:
brew install vim --with-lua --with-override-system-vim
if has('clipboard')
if has('unnamedplus') " When possible use + register for copy-paste
set clipboard=unnamed,unnamedplus
else " On mac and Windows, use * register for copy-paste
set clipboard=unnamed
endif
endif
First check if your vim installation has clipboard support.
vim --version
If clipboard support is installed you will see:
+clipboard
+X11
+xterm_clipboard
If clipboard support is not installed you will see:
-clipboard
-X11
-xterm_clipboard
To install clipboard support:
apt-get install vim-gnome
Once you have verified that clipboard support is installed do the following:
Position your cursor to the first line you want to copy.
Press Shiftv to enter visual mode.
Press ↓ to select multiple lines
Press "+y to copy the selected text to system clipboard.
Now you can copy the selected text to browser, text editor etc.
Press "+p if you want to copy system clipboard text to vim.
Above steps might get tedious if you have to repeatedly copy from vim to system clipboard and vice versa.
You can create vim shortcuts so that when you press Ctrlc selected text will be copied to system clipboard. And when you press Ctrlp system clipboard text is copied to vim. To create shortcuts :
Open .vimrc file and add following text at the end of file:
I just select in visual mode and press known to everyone Ctrl+C. If I want to also delete it, I press Ctrl+X. Basically that's how it works in all modern editors, and it's imo more performant than vim's modal commands, so why not?
Note that this config is in lua. I highly recommend using it over vimscript, it is much richer.