How to delete (not cut) in Vim?

Question

How can I delete a line without putting it into my default buffer?

Example:

line that will be copied.

line that I want to be substitued with the previous one.

What I'm trying to do:

yy
dd
p

But Vim replaces the recent copied string with the deleted (cutted) one. I know that I can use buffers like, "1yy, dd then "1p, but I always forget to put the copied string in a buffer then I need to paste my contents first (line that will be copied) and then delete what I want (line that I want to be substituted with the previous one.)

How can I really delete a text in Vi(m) without copying it?

Another related question is how I can forward delete a word in insert mode? I want something similar to Ctrl+w.

Answer 1

The black hole register "_ will do the trick, but there is a better solution:

When you enter the line back with the p command you are pasting the contents of the (volatile) default register "", which has been overwritten by dd. But you still can paste from the (non volatile) yank register "0, which won't be overwritten by the delete command dd.

So these are the commands you want to use as per your example:

yy
dd
"0p

Answer 2

Use the "black hole register", "_ to really delete something: "_d.
Use "_dP to paste something and keep it available for further pasting.

For the second question, you could use <C-o>dw. <C-o> is used to execute a normal command without leaving the insert mode.

You can setup your own mappings to save typing, of course. I have these:

nnoremap <leader>d "_d
xnoremap <leader>d "_d
xnoremap <leader>p "_dP

Answer 3

That's one of the things I disliked about vim... I ended up mapping dd to the black hole register in my .vimrc and life has been good since:

nnoremap d "_d
vnoremap d "_d

Answer 4

the following mappings will produce:

• d => "delete"
• leader d => "cut"

nnoremap x "_x
nnoremap d "_d
nnoremap D "_D
vnoremap d "_d

nnoremap <leader>d ""d
nnoremap <leader>D ""D
vnoremap <leader>d ""d

Also, it is a nice practice to have the "leader" key set to comma, e.g:

let mapleader = ","
let g:mapleader = ","

these 2 snippets will make ",d" be your new cut command.

If you would like to use these mappings togther with a shared system clipboard configuration, see further details at https://github.com/pazams/d-is-for-delete

Answer 5

You can use "_d to prevent things from overwriting your yanked text. You can store yanked or deleted text in whatever register you want with ", and _ is the 'black hole' register, where you send stuff that you don't care about.

For more information you can type :help "_ or :help deleting

Answer 6

I use noremap ' "_ in my .vimrc

This keep the behavior of dd, so I can use it to cut as before.

But when I really want to delete something, just use the prefix '. For example: 'dd,'dw

Answer 7

yy
Vx
p

When in visual mode, x will delete the selection, so if you want to delete a whole line, first press V to select the line in visual mode and then press x to delete the selection.