Vim filter command not using line-wise selection

Question

I may have seen this question before on Vi Exchange but I'm having trouble locating it while searching now. If it's already been answered, please let me know the duplicate and I can find that.

I have text like this:

And I would like to copy that text to the clipboard. The command I'm using is:

:'<,'>w !it2copy

However, it seems to do a line-wise copy (as if I am in Visual-Line mode), as the clipboard now shows:

my_string = """SELECT * FROM
mytable WHERE id=4"""

Instead of, what I want:

SELECT * FROM
mytable WHERE id=4

How can I get the exact cursor selection instead of the line-wise equivalent?

Note that an answer should take the copy-paste across multiple-lines into account.

Answer 1

To apply Ex command to an arbitrary selection you can do the following:

1. Copy selection to the end of file
2. Select those new lines and run the command
3. Cut the result
4. Replace old selection with the result

Of course, it's no good in doing this manually, so the plugins exist.

I know of VIS (written by DrChip), and vim-opera (that one is mine; it also provides an easy-to-use interface for g@ operator). Probably, there must be others too.