In vim, first move to the top line of the block. Then press Shift+V (i.e. upper-case V); this line will then be highlighted. Then move down (down-arrow key) to the bottom line of the block; the whole block will then be highlighted.
At this stage enter :s/^/# / (The "g" in Don's sequence is not needed -- it is for global substitution within a line). This is easy and quick in vim, and does not require entering line numbers. I'm not sure now (long time since I used vi) whether it also works as stated for vi. Ted. On 07-May-2012 03:16:36 Don McKenzie wrote: > in vi (vim too?), in edit mode > >:a,bs/^/# /g > > inserts "# " at the beginning of lines a through b > > > On 6-May-12, at 7:41 PM, Joshua Wiley wrote: > >> Hi Ranjan, >> >> To me, this is really a text editors job. Feature-rich editors make >> it trivial, for example in Emacs, you can select a region (whatever >> size you want) and M-x comment-region automatically comments every >> line in that region. Similarly M-x uncomment-region will uncomment >> every line. If you were doing this all the time, you could bind some >> keyseries to do it for you. Vim has something similar, though I >> forget the exact command. >> >> A hack is: >> >> if (FALSE) { >> all the lines >> you want >> to be `commented' >> } >> >> which will leave them unevaluated at least. Both of these have been >> suggested before on the list, which is probably why Brian Ripley >> suggested searching the archives. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Josh >> >> >> On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Ranjan Maitra <mai...@iastate.edu> >> wrote: >>> Dear friends, >>> >>> Is there an easy way of commenting out a block of R code after it has >>> been written? (I am aware that R-aware editors can insert # >>> line-by-line while it is being written, but I want to basically block >>> out chunks of R code in a few strokes.) >>> >>> This question was asked on this mailing list some time ago: Professor >>> Ripley's answer was to try the following: >>> >>> RSiteSearch(string="comment multiple lines") >>> >>> Perfectly fine, but inexplicably, I got searches back (seven >>> pages) which do not seem to have any connection with what I am >>> looking >>> for. >>> >>> Is there an easy way of doing this? >>> >>> Many thanks and best wishes, >>> Ranjan >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- >>> guide.html >>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >> >> >> >> -- >> Joshua Wiley >> Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology >> Programmer Analyst II, Statistical Consulting Group >> University of California, Los Angeles >> https://joshuawiley.com/ >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting- >> guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it > would be perverse > to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to > rise tomorrow, > but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. > -- Stephen Jay Gould > > > > Don McKenzie, Research Ecologist > Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab > US Forest Service > phone: 206-732-7824 > > Affiliate Professor > School of Environmental and Forest Sciences > University of Washington > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@wlandres.net> Date: 07-May-2012 Time: 08:27:10 This message was sent by XFMail ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.