Long-range line duplication

The brief

In the video, we tackle a simple problem. With our cursor on line 16 of this file:

#sponsors_feature, #sponsors_index {
  width: 120px;
}
#sponsors_index {
  position: absolute;
  top: -2px; right: 0;
}
#sponsors_index h2 {
  background: #fff url('/images/components.png') -362px -579px;
}
#sponsors_feature {
  position: absolute;
  top: 136px; left: 20px;
}
#sponsors_feature h2 {
  text-indent: -99999px;
  margin-bottom: 0px;
}

Copy line 9 and place a duplicate below line 16, to produce this:

#sponsors_feature, #sponsors_index {
  width: 120px;
}
#sponsors_index {
  position: absolute;
  top: -2px; right: 0;
}
#sponsors_index h2 {
  background: #fff url('/images/components.png') -362px -579px;
}
#sponsors_feature {
  position: absolute;
  top: 136px; left: 20px;
}
#sponsors_feature h2 {
  text-indent: -99999px;
  background: #fff url('/images/components.png') -362px -579px;
  margin-bottom: 0px;
}

Normal mode solutions

We start with a naïve solution:

kkkkkkk
yy
jjjjjjj
p

Our first refinement speeds up navigation using the goto line command (:help G), and the jumplist:

9G
yy
<C-o>
p

Ex command solutions

An alternative way to goto line 9 would be :9. We can also use the number as a range for the :yank command. The cool thing about this technique is that it doesn’t move our cursor, so we can cut the number of steps in half:

:9yank
p

But we can still do better. Vim has another Ex command that combines the yank and put operations into one: the :copy command. This is the longhand form:

:9copy16

We can compress this down to just three characters:

:9t.

The :t command is simply an alias for :copy. When used in an {address} the dot symbol stands for the current line.

The `:copy` command

Here are some more examples of how the :copy command can be used:

command	action
`:9t.`	copy line 9 placing a duplicate below the current line
`:t5`	copy the current line placing a duplicate below the line 5 (and moving the cursor)
`:-7t.`	copy the line 7 before the current cursor position placing a duplicate below the current line
`:+4t.`	copy the line 4 after the current cursor position placing a duplicate below the current line
`:9,11t.`	copy the lines 9 to 11 placing the duplicate lines below the current cursor position

VimCasts.org