Deleting text
There are several commands that delete text from the screen. All
of these begin with the letter d. After the d comes
a letter indicating what you want to delete. Usually this letter is
based on one of the cursor movement commands. For example:
- Command
- Action
- d$
- Deletes text from the cursor's current position to the end of the line.
- dd
- Deletes the entire line containing the cursor.
- dL
- Deletes text from the cursor's current position to the bottom of the screen.
- dw
- Deletes text from the cursor's current position to the beginning of the next word.
- de
- Deletes text from the cursor's current position to the end of a word. If the cursor is in the middle of a word, de deletes to the end of the same word; if the cursor is at the end of a word, de deletes to the end of the next word.
In the same way, d followed by → or ← (l or h) can delete a single character. Try both instructions and see which character gets deleted.
If you delete something by accident, you can undo the deletion by typing u (lowercase). Try this now. Type dH. What happens? Now type u and see the deleted text return.
A number followed by a delete command repeats the command that
number of times. For example:
- 5dw deletes five words
- 10dd deletes ten lines