Shortcuts in gvim

Question

I'm using gvim for text editing.

Some shortcuts are listed as

Cut +y
Paste "+gP

However those precise key combinations do not work so I suppose that + and g might be abbreviations for other shortcuts. How can I figure this one out?

Answer 1

It's "+y, not +y

The "+ prefixes tell vim to use the X11 clipboard instead of vim's internal clipboard. You only need them if you want to exchange text with other programs.

Usually you can just use y to yank the marked text (if you are in visual mode) or append some move commands to yank a text range, like y2w to yank the next two words. Then use p or gP to paste the yanked text before (p) or after (gP) the cursor. gP moves the cursor behind the new text while g sets it at the start of the new text.

As gvim, like any other vi derivative, isn't intuitive to use you really should read the handbook in the Help menu.