Using :g to yank in quotes across multiple lines

Question

I was reading through the vim wiki about the power of g https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_g and would like to do something similar to :g/pattern/y A but a little bit different.

I have an html file with tags that have a bunch of properties like this:

<the-tag
  prop="prop1"
</the-tag>
<the-tag
  prop="prop2"
</the-tag>

I would like to append to register a, the value inside the prop quotes. Is this possible using :g or some other method? Here is what I tried:

:g/prop/normal yi" A

but this just yanks the very last prop value instead of a whole list. Of course I could do:

:g/prop/y A

but this would give me:

prop="prop1"
prop="prop2"

which is not what I'm looking for. Is this possible?

Answer 1

You're confusing the passing of the register to :yank (Ex command) vs. y (normal mode). For the latter, instead of appending the register, it must come before the y command, and with the " prefix: "Ayi" (with register A, yank the inner " double quoted text)

:let @a = '' | g/prop/normal! "Ayi"

Note that as the yank is characterwise, all matches will be appended without any separator (resulting in prop1prop2). You could add a separator like this:

:let @a = '' | :g/prop/let @a .= " " | normal! "Ayi"

Answer 2

Somebody had a similar problem: vim yank all matches of regex group into register.

In your case regex will be prop="\zs.*\ze".

\zs denotes where the match will start in the "substitution" (yanking to register), and \ze where to end.

Answer 3

A slightly different variation using :h gn motion:

let @a='' | g/prop="\zs.*\ze"/normal! "Aygn