>> Selecting a block (Ctrl-V), then pressing I (shift-i) and >> entering text which then gets inserted into all rows of the >> block at the same > column. > > I've tried to that some time ago, because i though that should > work the way you described it. But it didn't and still > doesn't work on my vim, so i'm quite surprised by your tip :-) > > > But as it doesn't work: do you have to enable some setting to > use that feature?
Odd that it doesn't work for you. I'm running vim7 on Debian testing (though since the release, this might be Debian-stable). Visual block mode, as described in :help v_b_i :help v_b_a works as advertised. A couple things to ensure: 1) does it work for you if you start vim without any resource files? You can try this with bash$ vim -u NONE filename.txt 2) you're sure you're doing this in block-wise visual-mode rather than line-wise or character-wise visual mode? (control+V rather than "v" or "V") 3) check the output of ":version" to ensure you have "+visualextra" included in your version's build options. It's hard to imagine that anybody would go to the trouble of disabling it in your build, but it's at least one more thing to check. -tim