Cut and copy : Blackhole and default register assignment

Question

I currently have something like this in my vimrc. The reason i have this is because I do not want items to be copied to the default register when I delete or change.

"Copy the contents of delete to the black hole register
nnoremap dd "_dd
nnoremap d "_d
vnoremap d "_d
"Copy the contents of yank to the black hole register
nnoremap c "_c
nnoremap C "_C

Now lately i felt the need of adding a cut command as well which deletes and yank. I understand by default Vim does not have a delete but it has a cut command. However i have customised it to my liking. I wanted to know if there was a way for me to cut text that would work with the above keybinding. I tried doing this

"*dd

but that does not work and I guess that's because dd above gets mapped to "_dd Any suggestions on how I can accomplish a cut while maintaining my current shortcuts ?

Answer 1

First off, I think your first mapping is unnecessary. Since the second d is in operator mode, it does not get remapped to "_d, so it maps out to "_dd. Secondly, you could do this:

nnoremap d "_d
nnoremap D "_D

nnoremap "*d "*d
nnoremap "*D "*D

This works since it uses noremap. Of course, you can change the register this yanks to, or the keystrokes you use to call it. For example, you could do

nnoremap "*d d
nnoremap "*D D

To make it yank to the unnamed register.