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How to copy the contents of one register to another without pasting on clipboard? I'd yanked one text and it got yanked in the default " register. Now I want to copy another text without deleting/overwriting " register. So I want to move the contents of " register to say some a or b register so that I can copy the new text inside ". How to do this?

Mike Bailey
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bluegenetic
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2 Answers2

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To copy or swap values between registers you can use the :let command, for example to copy the contents of the b register to a:

:let @a=@b

Or copy the contents of the " register to a:

:let @a=@"

Check this Vim Tip for some good key mapping suggestions:

Christian C. Salvadó
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    Somehow I cannot get this to work. I have a pretty minimal vim on this mcahine. Here are some of my settings. VIM - Vi IMproved 7.0 (2006 May 7, compiled Mar 5 2011 21:36:07) Included patches: 1, 3-4, 7-9, 11, 13-17, 19-26, 29-31, 34-44, 47, 50-56, 58-64, 66-73, 75, 77-92, 94-107, 109, 202, 34-237 Compiled by Tiny version without GUI. – Paul Apr 24 '14 at 19:01
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    @Paul, as far I remember the *small* and *tiny* feature sets of Vim do not support the `:let` command. – Christian C. Salvadó Apr 24 '14 at 21:57
  • Can you explain what `@` does? – Gqqnbig Mar 03 '18 at 19:51
  • `@` is the way of working with registers as variables. See `:help let-register` for details. You can basically just think of it as `@a` being the variable where register `a` is stored. – cincodenada Mar 22 '18 at 21:21
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You can do something like this:

let @a = getreg('"')

That'll copy the " register to the a register.

derobert
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