In the (new) “vim hot stuff” section, i would like to post about those Vim’s features that, when you meet them the first time, you think: “UAO! That is cool! How did i survive without it so far?”. The best example, for me, is the option “:set relativenumber” (from the 7.3); i think i was waiting for it from my beginning with Vim and i have realized how much i was waiting for it the first time that i have met it!

About the feature i am going to introduce here, i was googling for “how to select multi line in visual mode quicker” and i was led to this solution:

… I know that some people use marks extensively to make visual selections. For example, if I’m on line 5 and I want to select to line 35, I might press ma to place mark a on line 5, then :35 to move to line 35. Shift + v to enter linewise visual mode, and finally `a to select back to mark a.

Marks… They sound amazing and i probably was the only one who didn’t know that… But i finally found a way to quickly select multiple lines!

For who uses intensively buffers, I have read that every buffer can be marked and then the user can move in buffers jumping between marks.

Anyway explain “advanced” usages of marks is not the goal of this post, neither answer question like “Can i delete a mark?” or “Can i have the same mark repeated on the same file?” (as first because i don’t know those answers yet!), so i would suggest to find your favourite usage and enjoy!

Some links

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7406949/vim-faster-way-to-select-blocks-of-text-in-visual-mode
• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_marks

Thanks for reading!