Question

In Vim I am trying to paste a few lines:

PROC SQL;
   CONNECT TO DB2(DSN=test);
   CREATE TABLE test AS SELECT *
   FROM CONNECTION TO DB2 (

above every line starting with “select”
and

);
quit;

below every line that ends with “FOR FETCH ONLY”

Is there a way to use the paste buffer? Like

%s/^select/(a!)\rselect/

so that it once I type the command it opens a paste buffer like the a! command, and uses that as the substitute?

Thanks,
Dan

Answer 1

If you have the PROC SQL block in register a and the quit; block in register b, then you can simply do the following.

:g/^select/put! a
:g/FOR FETCH ONLY$/put b

:g finds all lines that match the given pattern and then runs the specified ex command on those lines. In this case, you want to use :put to paste the contents of the specified registers.