visual line mode is ended by inner block motion

Question

When I do Vi{y to select inside a { block and yank it, it doesn't paste how I expect.

I noticed that after V (which puts me into VISUAL-LINE mode), the i{ object takes me into VISUAL mode.

Here's a gif:

I wanted the paste p to put the text underneath where my cursor was, as if I had yanked some text while in VISUAL-LINE mode.

If I start visual mode with shift-V, I want object motions like i{ to keep me inside of that mode.

Answer 1

i}                          *v_i}* *i}* *i{*
i{                          *v_iB* *v_i{* *iB*
iB          "inner Block", select [count] Blocks, from "[count] [{"
            to the matching '}', excluding the '{' and '}' (see
            |[{|).
            When used in Visual mode it is made characterwise.

You can use getregtype() to check register type.

Vi{ will change visual mode to v, you can hit V again to return to V.

As long as lines of { and } don't belong to lines of i}, yi} will result in V type register, you should use yi} in your case.

Answer 2

^{See :h intro for more details}

Vim has seven BASIC modes:

• Normal mode
• Visual mode
• Select mode
• Insert mode
• Command-line mode
• Cmdline mode
• Ex mode
• Terminal mode

There are six ADDITIONAL modes. These are variants of the BASIC modes:

• Operator-pending mode
• Replace mode
• Virtual Replace mode
• Insert Normal mode
• Insert Visual mode
• Insert Select mode

As you can see, there is no mode called visual-line-mode that you talked about in your question. There are just three kinds of visual-mode, none of which are modes themselves:

• Characterwise visual (see `:h characterwise-visual)
• Linewise visual (see `:h linewise-visual)
• Blockwise visual (see `:h blockwise-visual)

Read :h visual for more details.

If you look through :h text-object, you will see that the text objects you're talking about, i.e. i{ are not acceptable for linewise-visual style of visual mode. Because, text-objects are supposed to work with visual-mode and after an operator, see :h text-objects. That's why Vim intelligently changes the type of visual mode you were in, because it makes sense. But of course, you're in complete control with just one more keystroke.

Suggestion: Use vi{ to visually select the content inside the curly braces and press V to start visual line mode over the already selected lines. This is the default way.