Yank multiple lines without using visual mode

Question

I have the text:

abcd
abcd
abcd
abcd

my cursor is in the first line, and I want to yank the first 2 lines.

Usually I would do it by pressing Shift+v, selecting the second line by going down with j and yanking with y.

How can this be achieved without using visual mode?

Answer 1

yank is an operator like d and c, which means it works on all motions and text-objects (see the relevant help sections).

That means that yip, y), ygg, yib, y/pattern<CR>, yfc etc., all work (and with registers, too)! They can potentially be multiple lines.

In this case I would probably use yj (and not y2j) because yank will include the current line and the one we land on.

Note that some motions are not line-wise by default. You can use yV{motion} to force a line-wise yank.