Is there a command to enter Visual Block mode?

Question

I've set up a bunch of key mappings that would cause many Vim users to cringe. Now I am unable to get into Visual Block mode using Ctrl-V (Ctrl-Q isn't mapped, but it doesn't work).

Is there any command that I can type to enter Visual Block mode?

Ideally I could set something up so that :vb would enter visual block mode.

Answer 1

There is no built in command to start visual block mode in vim, but you can define one yourself:

command! Vb normal! <C-v>

Here is a breakdown of how it works:

• command! Vb - This creates a command called "Vb". The ! after command means that vim will not throw an error if the command is already defined.
• normal! <C-v> - This command tells vim to take all characters after it and act like you had pressed them in normal mode. The ! makes it so that all user defined mappings are ignored. This means that if <C-v> is mapped to something else, it will still work the way it does by default.

Here are some relevant help topics:

• :help :command
• :help :normal

NOTE

User defined commands must start with a capital letter.

Also, there may be a conflicting mapping which prevents you from using <C-v> to enter visual block mode. To check for any conflicting mappings for <C-v>, you can run :verbose map <C-v>.

Answer 2

As far as I can find, there is no built-in command to start visual mode.

However, you can easily add these commands to Vim:

:command! Visual      normal! v
:command! VisualLine  normal! V
:command! VisualBlock execute "normal! \<C-v>"

You can change the names of these commands to whatever you want, but all user-defined commands must start with an upper-case letter (so you can't use :vb, but :Vb is okay).