How to use registers in Vim

Three new dishes go on the menu tomorrow. The mole burrito and the chorizo burrito need the hot note that's under the al pastor, and the squash tacos need the vegan note from the bean bowl. With plain yy and p you'd carry one note at a time, because each yank throws out the one before. Put each note in a register of its own, named by a letter, and you can carry both.

A lowercase letter replaces what the register held. The same letter in capitals adds to it: "Ayy puts the line after whatever register a already holds. That lets you collect lines from all over a file and paste them in one go. Any letter from a to z will do, so pick one you'll remember, like h for hot.

To check what your registers hold before you paste, type :reg (short for :registers) and press ↵. It lists every register that holds something, with ^J marking the line breaks.

Vim fills some registers on its own. Register 0 holds your last yank, and only a yank changes it, so "0p pastes what you copied even after you've deleted something since. Paste without overwriting has the whole trick.

Each time you delete a line or more, it goes into register 1, and what was in 1 moves along to 2, 2 to 3 and so on up to 9. So "1p pastes the last line you deleted, and "2p the one before it. A smaller delete, such as a word with dw, goes to register - instead.

"_dd deletes the line into _, the black hole, and fills no register at all. Register + is your computer's clipboard, which Copy to the system clipboard sets up.

In Insert mode, Ctrl-r followed by a register's name types out what it holds, and you carry on typing. It saves you from spelling a long or awkward word twice. Copy the word into a register with "ayiw (which copies the word under the cursor), then Ctrl-ra wherever you need it.