How to insert text from a variable at current cursor position?

Question

I am writing a vim script, and I need to insert the contents of a string variable at the current cursor position. What is an appropriate way to do this?

let text = "Lorem ipsum sit dolor amet ..."
" How to insert text at current cursor position?

I know that :read can do something like this, but it is only applicable for inserting text that come from files, not text stored in variables.

Answer 1

You can do a literal insert of register contents through :help i_CTRL-R_CTRL-R, combined with the expression register (:help quote=) to reference the variable:

execute "normal! i\<C-r>\<C-r>=text\<CR>\<Esc>"

If you know that the variable contents are just plain text (without any special control characters), you could also just append the variable contents as-is and conclude with <Esc>:

execute "normal! i" . text . "\<Esc>"

Or use the low-level setline(), splicing in the text at the cursor column via string manipulation:

let line = getline('.')
call setline('.', strpart(line, 0, col('.') - 1) . text . strpart(line, col('.') - 1))

Answer 2

You might go with setline function or simple:

let text = "Lorem ipsum sit dolor amet ..."
exe "normal! a" . text . "\<Esc>"

• exe (:execute) is to execute vimscript
• normal! a executes a command as you type in vim (append after cursor)
• . text then you concatenate your text with normal a. As you would type this text in vim after a.
• and '\<Esc> to exit insert mode.

Answer 3

The following function emulates the behaviour of: i + insert text + Esc.

" Insert text at the current cursor position.
function! InsertText(text)
    let cur_line_num = line('.')
    let cur_col_num = col('.')
    let orig_line = getline('.')
    let modified_line =
        \ strpart(orig_line, 0, cur_col_num - 1)
        \ . a:text
        \ . strpart(orig_line, cur_col_num - 1)
    " Replace the current line with the modified line.
    call setline(cur_line_num, modified_line)
    " Place cursor on the last character of the inserted text.
    call cursor(cur_line_num, cur_col_num + strlen(a:text))
endfunction

Usage:

let text = "Lorem ipsum sit dolor amet ..."
call InsertText(text)

Documentation:

• setline()
• setpos()