Question

I’m looking for a command in VI/VIM to search for particular text in the file and grab the whole line and output in either on the screen or separate file. e.g.

This is some line with this _word_ and some other text.
This is some line with this some other text and some other text.

so this would output only the first line..

Answer 1

:redir > output.txt
:g/_word_/p
:redir END

The line will be output to the screen and to output.txt. See :h :redir.

EDIT: I agree with others who suggest using plain old *nix grep if you can. Situations where you might not be able to use grep:

• You’re searching buffer text that doesn’t exist in a file on the filesystem.
• You’re using Vim-specific regex extensions, like cursor location, column number, marks, etc.
• You want do this in a cross-platform way, and grep might not exist on the system you’re using.

redir can be useful in these situations.