How do I delete a large block of text without counting the lines?

Question

In vim, I often need to delete, or yank/put large blocks of text.

I can count the lines of text and enter something like 50dd to delete 50 lines.

But that's a bit of a pain. How can I delete this large block of text without having to know how many lines to delete in advance?

Answer 1

Go to the starting line of your block, and type ma (mark "a", though you can of course use different letters, and even multiple letters for different marks provided you can keep it straight in your head what each letter is a mark of).

Then go to the last line and enter d'a (delete to mark "a") or y'a (yank to mark "a") ^(a).

That will delete/yank all lines from the current to the marked one (inclusive).

Then you can paste it somewhere else with the normal paste commands, such as p or P.

It's also compatible with vi as well as vim, on the off chance that your environment is not blessed with the latter.

---

^(a) I also use this to save my place in the file if I have to go looking elsewhere for something like, for example, copy-pasting the definition of a function I want to call.

I simply mark the current line in the same way, ma, then wander off to find whatever you're looking for.

Then, once I've found it and copied it to a register, I just enter 'a to go back to mark "a", the line I saved beforehand, where I can then paste it.

Answer 2

In Vim, use visual line mode:

1. Put your cursor on the top line of the block of text/code to remove
2. Press V (That's capital "V" : Shift + v )
3. Move your cursor down to the bottom of the block of text/code to remove
4. Press d

For deleting large blocks of text this is preferred over simple visual mode because you don't need to worry about which column the cursor is at.

Answer 3

You can easily delete large block of text if you know its structure.

• If it's a paragraph, use d{ or d} or dap (or 3d{ for 3 paragraphs and so on).

• If it's within parenthesis, use d% or dab or da( or da).

• If it's the text till end of the file, use dG

• If you know how it ends, use d/ and type the ending text followed by Enter (you can also use a regular expression, so the possibilities are endless).

Alternatively use visual line mode (V) and use motion keys to quickly select the text (e.g. by {) and remove it (d or x).

Or as Lie Ryan suggested, use d/search-string/eEnter to delete text from current cursor to searched string.

See: :help d and :help motion for more info.

Answer 4

You can :set relativenumber, so you don't have to count. ;)

Answer 5

You can use motions and/or text objects. For instance, you can delete everything from the cursor to the next blank line with d}. If the cursor is inside a paragraph, the paragraph may be deleted with dip or dap. If the cursor is within a HTML tag, you can delete it with dit or dat.

Good mnemonics for these are "delete inside" and "delete around" (paragraph / tag / parenthesis).

Answer 6

I usually do

:<start>,<end>d

which will delete every line between the start and end line numbers provided (including the given lines).

Note that both start and end can be absolute line numbers, patterns, or offsets from another position.

Also see doubleDown's comment about viewing Vim's range documentation, it has some useful tips.

Example:

Say you have the following file:

1. The quick brown
2. fox jumps
3. over the
4. lazy dog.

Then by using the command :2,3d or :/fox/,/over/d or :/quick/+1,/lazy/-1 or :+1,+2d if you're on the first line or :-1,.d if you're on the third line, you end up with:

1. The quick brown
4. lazy dog.

Answer 7

If it is delimited blocks (eg: code or XML/HTML tags) that you're dealing with, you can position the cursor at the start of the block and use the visual mode along with % to quickly select entire blocks of code and then hit d to delete them.

Answer 8

Apart from all the other good advice I'm adding d+Shift+L for deleting everything from the current cursor position to the last visible line on the screen. Repeating the command will get you down relatively fast.

Answer 9

The numbers.vim plugin is very useful for this. It's an enhanced way to precede each line with a line number. Like 'number' and 'relativenumber', both roled into one!

It's enabled by default after installation, you also want to add set number to your vimrc if you haven't got it already, since it behaves in strange ways if you don't have it.

In normal mode it looks similar to :set relativenumber:

  3 call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
  2 
  1 Plug 'myusuf3/numbers.vim'
7   set number█
  1 
  2 " Add indentation 'guidelines' (:IndentLinesToggle or <F11>)
  3 Plug 'Yggdroot/indentLine'

It shows you relative line numbers, except for the line where the cursor is on, where it shows the absolute line number (7 in this case).

If we then switch to insert mode, it will behave as if number was set by always showing absolute line numbers:

  4 call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
  5 
  6 Plug 'myusuf3/numbers.vim'
  7 set number█
  8   
  9 " Add indentation 'guidelines' (:IndentLinesToggle or <F11>)
 10 Plug 'Yggdroot/indentLine'

There are some more options and a few commands (check the homepage), but the defaults should work for most people.

Answer 10

Another approach is if you are trying to delete to a specific pattern, you can simply type d/delimEnter.

Answer 11

You can use the normal procedure of entering d plus a motion (as already explained in the other answers). The EasyMotion plugin, provides new motions you can use that could solve your problem in a quick and easy way.

Say you want to to delete from the current cursor position to the end of any given word on the screen, the motion keys would be <Leader><Leader>e (akin to the normal e motion). Then type the highlighted letter(s) that appear at the end of the word in question. There is also a line motion so you can delete the current line down to the line in question with <Leader><Leader>j.

I have my <Leader> key set to ,. So, the full command is d<Leader><Leader>e{highlighted letter(s)}.

From :help easymotion:

EasyMotion provides a much simpler way to use some motions in vim. It takes the <number> out of <number>w or <number>f{char} by highlighting all possible choices and allowing you to press one key to jump directly to the target.

When one of the available motions is triggered, all visible text preceding or following the cursor is faded, and motion targets are highlighted.

Edit:

EasyMotion's github repository is at https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-easymotion.

This reddit about people using easymotion might be a fun read.

Answer 12

There is a simple solution that can solve your problem.

Place your cursor at the begining of the text block you want to remove, and do d50gg.

This will delete all the lines from your current position to the 50th line of your text.

e.q: if your cursor is at line 46, d50gg will delete 4 lines.

Answer 13

Use visual mode with line highlighting.

1. Put your cursor on the top line of the block of text/code to remove
2. Press Shift + v
3. Move your cursor down to the bottom of the block of text/code to remove
4. Press d

I prefer this method for deleting blocks of code because it deletes whole lines compared to simply using visual mode where you have to position the cursor in the right column to delete what you want.

Answer 14

I don't like to have relativenumber on all the time, so I configured my Vim to enable it only when I am in Visual Mode:

" Entering Visual mode
nnoremap <silent>     v :set relativenumber cursorcolumn<CR>v
nnoremap <silent> <C-q> :set relativenumber cursorcolumn<CR><C-q>
nnoremap <silent>    gv :set relativenumber cursorcolumn<CR>gv
nnoremap <silent>     V :set relativenumber<CR>V

" When finished
augroup ClearCursorColumnAndLine
    autocmd!
    autocmd CursorHold * set norelativenumber nocursorcolumn nocursorline
augroup END

This makes your task easy:

V49jd

because after hitting V you can see how far away the target line is.

This may prove annoying in the long run (the text shifts right and left when relativenumber is enabled/disabled), but so far I am quite enjoying it.

Answer 15

What worked great for me with vi:

1. :set number to view the number of the line until where I wanted to delete;

   +1289 idle 
   +1289 idle 
   +1290 # <- I want to delete until here
   +1291 if [[ ! -z "$SFIN" ]]
   

2. Go back to the line where deletion had to start

3. Used deletion from current line, in normal mode> d1290G

Answer 16

You could also search for your text. For e.g. start your cursor where you want to delete. Then, enter visual mode:

Shift + V

Now, search for whatever phrase you want to end at. For example, if you want to end at the next end parentheses:

/)

Hit enter and the corresponding section will be highlighted. You can cycle through search results by hitting n. Once the relevant section is highlighted, you can easily delete the selection now:

d