Using Registers
We can get the selected text in a variable in Vim Script using registers.
normal gv"xy
let context = getreg("x")
Lets break down the command
normal mode -> gv -> (y)ank text -> to the "x" register
| |
| Copy the contents into x register(or any register you like)
|
Select the previously selected text
Here, we are entering normal mode and selecting text which was previously selected and yank the contents into a register in this case we are using (x) register, it can be any register.
Now to get the contents of that register we can use the function
getreg("register_name")
or use
"xp"
to paste the contents of the
x
register or more generally for any register(
"<register-name>p
).
Hence we can store the contents of the selected text in a variable for further processing or manipulation.
To quickly test this snippet from command mode, you can try the following steps:
Select a text and press Escape, we just want the
gv
command to refresh and get it's contents to the latest visual selection.
:normal! gv"xy
:let foo = getreg("x")
:echo foo
The echo command will simply print the text which we have selected in the file.
