Vi and Vim Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people using the vi and Vim families of text editors. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Since dot (.) is the range indicator for the current line I was expecting
:.co
to copy the current line, but it does not do this. What am I doing wrong? In contrast
:.w my_line.txt
will write the current line to a file. Why does the range work with this command, but not copy?
Reading :h :co you can see:
:[range]co[py] {address} *:co* *:copy*
Copy the lines given by [range] to below the line
given by {address}.
So you need to give an address (a line where you want to copy the current line). For example to put the current line on the last line of the buffer, you can use:
:.co $
If you want to get the line in a register you might want to use getline() and setreg():
:call setreg("*", getline('.'))
