Is there a way to delete something in Vim without moving it to a register?

Question

Often I want to delete something in Vim without moving it to a register. Is there a method of doing this? I find that having to explicitly specify the register "a to be a little much sometimes.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're actually asking two related questions here:

1. You want to delete text without it appearing in any registers
2. You want to be able to specify a default register other than "

The first one can be done, just use the _ register, which is called the "black hole" register, instead of something like the a register. For example: "_dd

The second one can't be done, as far as I know.

See :help registers.

Answer 2

You can always do something like this:

nnoremap d "_d
vnoremap d "_d

But I wouldn't recommend it: Vim's default should stay the way they are.

Instead of "_d, I use these mappings to delete into the black hole register:

nnoremap <leader>d "_d
vnoremap <leader>d "_d

That's only shorter by one key but it's better than overwriting a Vim default.

I use this mapping when I need to paste something several times:

vnoremap <leader>p "_dP

Which goes like this:

10 yank something
20 select something else
30 paste over it
40 GOTO 20