RE: Period in global command

John Degen wrote:
> I'm having trouble understanding why there is a period before
> "w" in the following command:
>
> :'a,'b g/^Error/ .w >> errors.txt

Others have explained that '.' is a range specifying the current
line. However, the reason it is needed is that the :w command
assume a default range of '%' (same as '1,$' which is all
lines). If the . is omitted, the w will write the whole buffer
to the end of file errors.txt.

Another approach to the above problem is:

:let @a = ''
:'a,'b g/^Error/ y A

The first command sets register a to '' (empty).
The second executes 'y A' on all wanted lines, and that yanks
the line to register A (which appends to register a).

The default range for y is . (current line) so no range need be
specified.

I am currently using the following for this kind of thing as
while simple is good, the convenience is very appealing:

:'a,'b CopyLines - ^Error

from tip http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Copy_search_matches

BTW I'm going to replace the script in that tip soon as I have
found a couple of corner cases where it fails.

John

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