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I have two blocks of text and I want to merge them. However, the problem is that the blocks are not synchronous and I want to place one in front of the other completely. For example, suppose we have the following block of text:

aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaa

and the following block:

bbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbb

And I want to merge them thus:

aaaaaaaabbbbbbbb
aaaaaaaabbbbbbbb
aaaaaaaabbbbbbbb
aaaaaaaabbbbbbbb

I can't copy line by line because there are many lines in both files and they could be different.

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2 Answers 2

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Select all 'bbbb..' text using Ctrl-V (visual block selection mode), yank; then go to the last char of the first aaaa... string, hit Ctrl-V again; go down to the last aaaa ... string, while staying in the same column (so cursor is still on the last a character). You are still in block selection mode. Hit 'p' to paste.

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3
  • I don't think this answer is right, as it deletes the last a in each row for me.
    – cbaumhardt
    Nov 8, 2015 at 22:08
  • Hah, you're right :) But the idea is still the same - just do it in the other direction, and 'prepend' to the line using P.
    – VanLaser
    Nov 9, 2015 at 9:44
  • For me it was a bunch of assignment statements, so I ended up adding a bunch of spaces after the first line to not clobber the longer variable names. But it worked!
    – Ben Ogorek
    Nov 22, 2019 at 16:01
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Visual-block select (C-V) the text you want to prepend, then either yank/delete the text. Go to the first line and character of the text you want to prepend to, then press P (upper case P).

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