Vim Multiple Cursors to Insert Text

Quick blog for multiple cursor in Vim. For example we have the html below.

<div id="id1">1</div>
<div id="id2">2</div>
<div id="id3">3</div>
<div id="id4">4</div>

And we want to insert same class after id for every div element. Here is what we do in Vim.

First place cursor after id="id1".

Use Ctrl-v, and jjj(move 3 lines below) to select visual block.

Press I to switch to insert mode and start typing our class eg:class="my-class". Do not worry if there is only 1 line moving.

After finish typing, press Esc and we will get the result we want.

<div id="id1" class="myClass">1</div>
<div id="id2" class="myClass">2</div>
<div id="id3" class="myClass">3</div>
<div id="id4" class="myClass">4</div>

Deleting the class also works same way.

Place cursor on before class=myClass, use Ctrl-v and move the visual mode 3 lines below by jjj. Use l to highlight class=myClass and press d/x to delete the word.

<div id="id1">1</div>
<div id="id2">2</div>
<div id="id3">3</div>
<div id="id4">4</div>

That’s it for this post. I just want to do this without the vim-multiple-curson plugin.