How to Delete lines in Vim

Vim is a popular text editor that is known for its powerful and efficient editing features. One of the most common tasks that you will perform when editing text is deleting lines. In Vim, there are several ways to delete lines, from deleting a single line to deleting all the lines in a file.

In this article, we will explore how to delete lines in Vim, including deleting one line, deleting a range of lines, deleting all lines, and deleting lines that match a pattern.

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Deleting one line

To delete a single line in Vim, first, position your cursor on the line you want to delete. Then, in command mode, type dd and press Enter. This will delete the line your cursor is on.

1. Press ESC to switch to normal mode.
2. Move the cursor to the line to delete
3. Press dd to delete current line of the cursor position.

Deleting N lines from cursor

To delete the N number of lines from the cursor position, simply follow the steps:

1. Press ESC to switch to normal mode.
2. Move the cursor to the first line to delete
3. Press 3dd to delete 3 lines from the cursor position. Replace 3 with the line numbers to delete

Deleting range of lines

To delete a range of lines in Vim, you can use the :delete command. This command takes a range of lines as an argument and deletes all the lines within that range. For example, to delete lines 3 through 7, you would type :3,7d and press Enter. This would delete all the lines between lines 3 and 7 (inclusive).

Deleting all lines

To delete all the lines in a file, you can use the :%delete command. This command deletes all the lines in the file and is equivalent to typing :%d in command mode.

Deleting lines that match a pattern

To delete all the lines in a file that match a particular pattern, you can use the :global command. The :global command runs a command on all lines in the file that match a pattern. To delete all the lines that match a pattern, you would type :g/pattern/d and press Enter. This would delete all the lines in the file that contain the pattern.

Conclusion

Deleting lines is a common task when editing text, and Vim provides several ways to accomplish this task efficiently. From deleting a single line to deleting all the lines in a file, Vim’s powerful editing features make it easy to accomplish any editing task. By using the commands outlined in this article, you can easily delete lines in Vim and streamline your editing workflow.