Adding and Removing Text in mulitple lines in Vim

Adding Text at the Beginning of Multiple Lines

• Go the line you want to select the text.
• Press V (upppercase V) to state Visual line mode.
• Select multiple line using arrow or j/k keys.
• Press : after selecting the desired lines. This will open the line range command :'<,'>.
• Type s/^/<text>/, where “<text>” is the text you want to add at the beginning of each fo the selected lines. (^) indicates the will be added to the beginning of the line.

Example 1: Add text to the selected lines

Adding comments // to each line in verilog.

:'<','>s/^/\/\/ /

Example 2: Add text to the entire files

:%s/^/\/\/ /

• Press Esc to navigate to normal mode.
• % applies the command to all the lines in the file.

Removing Text at the Beginning of Multiple Line

• Press Esc to navigate to normal mode.
• Press V (upppercase V) to state Visual line mode.
• Select multiple line using arrow or j/k keys.
• Press : after selecting the desired lines. This will open the line range command :'<,'>.
• Type s/^..//, where (^) indicates the start of the line and (..) will select excatly two characters and (//) will delete them.

Example 1: Delete the first two characters from the selected lines

Remove the comments // for the selected lines.

:<','>s/^..//

Example 2: Delete the first two character from all the lines in a file

:%s/^..//

• Ensure you in the normal by pressing Esc before executing the above command.
• % applies the command to all the line in the file.

Adding Text to End of Multiple Line

• Go the line you want to select the text.
• Press V (upppercase V) to state Visual line mode.
• Select multiple line using arrow or j/k keys.
• Press : after selecting the desired lines. This will open the line range command :'<,'>.
• Type s/$/value/, where “value” is the text you want to add at the beginning of each fo the selected lines. ($) indicats the will be added to the end of the line.

Example

Adding comments ; to each line in verilog.

:'<','>s/$/; /

Removing Text at the End of Multiple Line

• Press Esc to navigate to normal mode.
• Press V (upppercase V) to state Visual line mode.
• Select multiple line using arrow or j/k keys.
• Press : after selecting the desired lines. This will open the line range command :'<,'>.
• Type s/..$//, where ($) indicates the end of the line and (..) will select excatly two characters and (//) will delete them.

Example 1: Delete the first two characters from the selected lines

Remove the comments // for the selected lines.

:<','>s/..$//

Example 2: Delete the first two character from all the lines in a file

:%s/..$//

• Ensure you in the normal by pressing Esc before executing the above command.
• % applies the command to all the line in the file.