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In Vim, how do I insert characters at the beginning of each line in a selection?
For instance, I want to comment out a block of code by prepending // at the beginning of each line assuming my language's comment system doesn't allow block commenting like /* */. How would I do this?
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vim Inserting text Insert text into multiple lines at once Press Ctrl + v to enter into visual block mode. Use ↑ / ↓ / j / k to select multiple lines. Press Shift + i and start typing what you want. After you press Esc , the text will be inserted into all the lines you selected.
Press ^ to move the cursor to the start of the current line. Press $ to move the cursor to the end of the current line.
Use sed 's insert ( i ) option which will insert the text in the preceding line.
In a visual block, you can insert text in each line before the selection with I , and you can append text in each line after the selection with A . If you use $ to convert the visual selection to select to the end of line, then A will append text to the end of each line in the visual block.
For further information and reading, check out "Inserting text in multiple lines" in the Vim Tips Wiki.
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This replaces the beginning of each line with "//":
:%s!^!//! This replaces the beginning of each selected line (use visual mode to select) with "//":
:'<,'>s!^!//! Note that gv (in normal mode) restores the last visual selection, this comes in handy from time to time.
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