From: janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com
On 2026-02-17 15:08, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <10n1ham$1mgl9$1@dont-email.me>,
> Anthony Howe wrote:
>> [...]
>
> Right. But since we are in this general area and not to change the subject
> but to change the subject, let me add that I have never been able to figure
> out the logic of the numbered buffers. I've never seen a good explanation
> of why they are there and how you might use them to your benefit. And
> every time I've tried to use them, things are not where I expect them to
> be. That is, when I do the "registers" command (in Vim), the contents of
> the numeric buffers always seems random/unpredictable to me.
Well, while for a long time I shared that feeling and typically also
abstain from using the numbered buffers[*] its quite "predictable" -
but I'm aware you might mean that last sentence more figuratively.
I think there's one important difference to the named buffers to know;
"yanking" will *not* put that text into the _numbered_ buffers, while
a deleted text will go there.[**] And then it gets simple; "1 was the
last deleted text, "2 the one before, etc., and whenever a new text
will be deleted the numbered registers stack contents will get shifted.
The inherent problem is that the register numbers change with every
new delete and you'd have to keep that in mind unnecessarily, so [*].
You can of course (in Vim) also interrogate the registers in case you
accidentally deleted a text some time before and want that recovered,
by :reg
Janis
[*] In practice I also use mainly named registers which are also more
powerful and the register name can be chosen to be a mnemonic letter.
[**] This is from my ad hoc tests, but note that the vim help says for
numbered registers:
"Vim fills these registers with text from yank and delete commands."
which is disturbing.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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