Is there a way to edit only part of a file?

Question

Unlike many people who are looking for this, or a similar sort of feature, it's not actually the file size I care about, I just find myself needing to deal with a very specific section of a file - maybe a couple hundred lines or less, so typically more than what fits on a screen at a reasonable font size.

One thought that I considered is creating a couple of marks, yanking that section, editing in a new split or tab, and then putting the edited text back.

That's kind of a hack, though, and doesn't make it so I can easily just save the text and run a command.

Manual folding could work for me, if I could make it so searches skip over the folds and they never open without a zO or something.

Is there any kind of way to edit a partial file in vim like that, or would I have to resort to some sweet hacks?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 02 '19 at 22:33

10

You could try the terrific NarrwRgn plugin by our very own Christian Brabandt, which has always worked very well for me.

Just select the lines you're interested in in visual mode, and then type :NR to open a new buffer containing just that area. Any changes you :write in the new buffer will appear instantly in the original, and you can simply close it when you're done: :q.

answered Apr 02 '19 at 22:33

Rich

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Hot dang that's fantastic. Pretty much exactly what I wanted! – Wayne Werner Apr 03 '19 at 00:39
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Thansk for mentioning my plugin ;) – Christian Brabandt Apr 03 '19 at 20:49
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@ChristianBrabandt It's a great plugin! – Rich Apr 04 '19 at 09:22

Is there a way to edit only part of a file?

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