Pasting data in multiple cursor mode

Question

in vs code I have the following file

1
2
3

a
b
c

Now I do the following steps

1. cut the lines a b c.
2. select the lines 1, 2, 3 and then go into multiple cursor mode (shift, alt I).
3. go to the end of the each number press and type a , and then do a paste.

The result is

1, a
b
c
2, a
b
c
3, a
b
c

but the result I wanted is

1, a
2, b
3, c

Answer 1

Sometime ago this functionality was apparently added. You can simply cut to your clipboard and then paste to multiple cursors - and, if there are the same number of lines on the clipboard as multiple cursors - each cursor will get one line from the clipboard.

You no longer need to be in multi-cursor mode for the cut or however you got the text onto the clipboard. Just cut it.

Demo:

Unfortunately, the gif cut off the full command after selecting the 1,2,3,. What you then want to do is put a cursor at the end of each line of the selection. Command: Add Cursors to Line Ends Shift+Alt+I.

VSCode 1.39 added this setting:

Editor: Multi Cursor Paste

Controls pasting when the line count of the pasted text matches the cursor count.

"editor.multiCursorPaste": "spread"

that will do what you want.

There is a second option full where each cursor will get the entire clipboard text. See https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-docs/blob/vnext/release-notes/v1_39.md#new-option-for-multi-cursor-pasting. Demo of the full option:

From the multi-cursor paste release notes:

New option for multi cursor pasting

In the past, when pasting multi-line text from the clipboard, VS Code would check if the clipboard text line count matches the cursor count, and if it does, it would "distribute"/"spread" each line to a cursor. This behavior is now tunable via the editor.multiCursorPaste setting, which can have the values:

spread - Each cursor pastes a line of text (default).

full - Each cursor pastes the full clipboard text.