Visual select from cursor to next empty line?

Question

How does one select from the current line to the next empty line?

I'm aware of SHIFT+V but then I have to either jump to the next empty line or press the down key a bunch of times. I know how to do this well when there's a matching character like a } but I have no idea how to do this for an empty line.

Answer 1

Vim understands the concept of a "paragraph". Vim's definition of a paragraph is a block of text surrounded by blank lines^*. There are several motions and text objects to work with this.

• [count]} – Move [count] paragraphs forward. You can use <S-v>} to select all lines from the current line to the next blank line. This will include the blank line, so you may want to use <S-v>}k.
• [count]ip – Select [count] paragraphs. It's like iw (inner word) except for, well, paragraphs. Using vip will select all of the paragraph though, rather than from the current line to the end of the paragraph.
• [count]ap – like ip, except that this will include the blank lines surrounding the paragraph.

One caveat here is that Vim doesn't consider a line with only whitespace as a "blank line". So make sure to check this (e.g. with :set list) if it doesn't appear to work.

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Also remember you can always search for the pattern you want. You can get an empty line with /^$; or if you don't want to select the empty line itself you can use \n\n to put the cursor at the end of the line before the first blank line:

• <S-v>/^$<CR>
• <S-v>/\n\n<CR>

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^* There are some exceptions, see :help paragraph for the full logic. But for most intents and purposes this definition works fine.

Answer 2

A shortcut for next empty line is }. So you just might want to use SHIFT+v}

Answer 3

Simply pressing Shift + } will take to next empty line without any text selection.

With Sift + v + }, vim selects the text from current cursor position to next empty line and you have to Press ESC to exit from selection mode