Vim :g command

2025-05-28
til vim neovim

I have been using some variation of Vim on and off since ~2012. And in that time I have learned staggeringly little about the editor. In comes Vim Golf.

Long story short, today I learned about the :g command. g is short for global and lets you run an Ex command across all lines matching some pattern in your current buffer. This can be used to quickly do things like:

• Delete all blank lines: :g/^\s*&/d.
• Delete all lines containing only Python comments: :g/^\s*# */d.
• Copy all lines matching the pattern to register a: qaq:g/pattern/y A (where qaq starts recording a macro into register a and immediately exits, leaving a empty and y A appends to register a each line matched)