Question

I just started diving into vi and so far learned only basic moving around/editing commands. While I am going through the book, is there a fast way to comment out a paragraph with -# in the same column with the cursor position (indenting the lines accordingly)?

Let’s say I have a piece of code:

%table
  - unless paginate(@clients).nil?
    %tr
      %th
        =t('index.name')
      %th
        =t('index.address')
      %th
        =t('index.phone')
    =render :partial => 'client', :collection => @clients

and I want to comment out lines between - unless and =render :partial with -# in one column and then be able to comment them in again. What command would that be?

Answer 1

In blockwise select mode, you can press I to insert in front of the block and A to insert after the block.

Setting 'relativenumber' (:set rnu) could help to count lines.

Start with CTRL-V to switch to blockwise select mode, then 8j to go down eight lines, then I#Esc to insert the #.

To remove it: dCTRL-V8j will delete blockwise.

Warning, if you happen to use vanilla gvim.exe on Windows, you probably have mswin.vim activated which remaps CTRL-V, use then CTRL-Q instead (or disable this plugin)