Deleting without copying to clipboard in Windows?

Question

Here is a typical workflow I would like to follow:

1. copy some data from Excel spreadsheet into the clipboard
2. in vim , delete the data in the file using ggdG
3. then paste the data into the file from the clipboard (I use CTRL-V as I am under Windows)

This does not work because step 2 copies the deleted data into the clipboard.

Is it possible to delete without affecting the clipboard ?

Answer 1

When deleting the buffer contents in Vim, you can send it to the black hole register "_. From :help quote_:

When writing to this register, nothing happens. This can be used to delete text without affecting the normal registers.

So simply use this command in your step 2:

gg"_dG

Or you can also use the :delete command with a range:

:%d _

This Ex command deletes every line into the black hole register.

Answer 2

Of course, everything is possible in Vim!

There is a register system in vim, and the clipboard is the register + (or *, it depends)

By default, the text you cut is put in the clipboard register, but you can put it in a black hole register (:h quote_) like so:

gg"_dG

The "_ here tells vim to put what you're about to cut in a black hole register, so your + register (a.k.a. your clipboard) stays untouched.

And the magic doesn't stop there, if it's a task you do often, you can set up a mapping to do that, for example:

nnoremap gd gg"_dG

So that next time you need to delete a whole file, you just need to hit gd

I personally have a mapping on my \ key like so:

nnoremap \ "_

So when I need to keep my clipboard, I begin my keystrokes with \

Answer 3

You could visual select with v or select the whole line with V and then press p or P to replace the selected text with the one in clipboard (I think it will work with yours Ctrl+v as well).