After copying a visual selection, return to original location

Question

My cursor is in the middle of a paragraph when I decide suddenly I need to copy that paragraph:

So I type vip to select the paragraph visually:

Now I hit cmd+C to copy to clipboard (this may vary on your system, but shouldn't be relevant to my post's central question), which leaves my cursor at the beginning of the paragraph:

rather than the desired position, which is where it was when I started.

Note the same problem occurs when yanking the selection non-visually with yip.

I would like the default behavior to be "return to original cursor position" after doing selection/copy actions like this. Is there a configuration that makes this possible?

Answer 1

A possible solution is to use jumps:

Before yanking or visually selecting you can set a new jump which you'll be able to access after your cursor has moved. To do so use m`.

Then after your cursor has moved because of the yanking use ctrlo to jump back in the jump list. Also you can see the list of the available jumps with :jumps and navigate this list with ctrlo and ctrli

To sum up your workflow would be:

• m`
• yip
• ctrlo

As using m` sets a mark, you can jump to it with `` instead of ctrlo.

You can read :h mark-motions and :h :jumps for more information.

Answer 2

You can avoid moving the cursor with:

:'{,'}y

See :help range, :help mark-motions, and :help :y.

Answer 3

My cursor is in the middle of a paragraph

If you've just edited it, the simplest solution is to type g ; which will position your cursor on the last edit position.

And if you haven't edited the paragraph, you could do a simple replace operation with the same character you are on (e.g. you're on h, you type rh) to trigger an edit "event" without actually editing anything.

Answer 4

The vim-easyclip plugin has a setting for this:

g:EasyClipPreserveCursorPositionAfterYank - Default 0 (ie. disabled). Vim's default behaviour is to position the cursor at the beginning of the yanked text, which is consistent with other motions. However if you prefer the cursor position to remain unchanged when performing yanks, enable this option.

It's a bit much for me to install an entire plugin just for this small feature, so I prefer using marks as per my comment.

Answer 5

vim solution :

source

You can just copy the paragraph to the clipboard with "+yip

Instead of selecting the paragraph and copying it just set an auto command with the TextYankPost event. In vim, I think you will need a plugin and in neovim, you can see an example below. Basically, the TextYankPost event will highlight your copy for some milliseconds.

If you simply copy you can use this function:

augroup yank_restore_cursor
    autocmd!
    autocmd VimEnter,CursorMoved *
        \ let s:cursor = getpos('.')
    autocmd TextYankPost *
        \ if v:event.operator ==? 'y' |
            \ call setpos('.', s:cursor) |
        \ endif
augroup END

Neovim solution:

local augroups = {}

augroups.yankpost = {

    save_cursor_position = {
        event = { "VimEnter", "CursorMoved" },
        pattern = "*",
        callback = function()
            cursor_pos = vim.fn.getpos('.')
        end,
    },

    highlight_yank = {
        event = "TextYankPost",
        pattern = "*",
        callback = function ()
            vim.highlight.on_yank{higroup="IncSearch", timeout=400, on_visual=true}
        end,
    },

    yank_restore_cursor = {
        event = "TextYankPost",
        pattern = "*",
        callback = function()
            local cursor = vim.fn.getpos('.')
            if vim.v.event.operator == 'y' then
                vim.fn.setpos('.', cursor_pos)
            end
        end,
    },

}

for group, commands in pairs(augroups) do
    local augroup = vim.api.nvim_create_augroup("AU_"..group, {clear = true})

    for _, opts in pairs(commands) do
        local event = opts.event
        opts.event = nil
        opts.group = augroup
        vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd(event, opts)
    end
end

NOTE: In both cases, it will only work in normal mode, although being possible to enhance it with some code.

The idea for the neovim solution and the vim solution comes from this answer on reddit.

Answer 6

Extending Al.G.'s answer, we can go to required location without editing. Solution is gi. We will reached to the same position where we was in last insert mode before.

• You are in the middle of the paragraph.
• switch to insert mode.
• switch to normal mode.
• press vip.
• press gi.
• switch to normal mode. (gi will left us to insert mode)

If we want to go to start or end of highlighted text.

 :help v_o 

When you yank the highlighted text, you will also return to normal mode and you may or may not retain the original cursor position.

1. If you start highlighting from higher to lower cursor position(from lower line-column number to higher line-column number), you will retain original cursor position on pressing y
2. Cursor will remain to current position if highlight start from lower to higher cursor position.

Returning to original location after yanking:
gv to get previous highlight.

Now you can switch between original and current location in visual mode with key
o or O.

Line and column number of status line will help to know exact cursor position.
Documentation:

:help visual-change