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vimclipboard

What is difference between Vim's clipboard "unnamed" and "unnamedplus" settings?

What is the difference between these 2 settings?

set clipboard=unnamed
set clipboard=unnamedplus

Which one should I use in order to have multi-platform .vimrc?

Solution

  • On Mac OS X and Windows, the * and + registers both point to the system clipboard so unnamed and unnamedplus have the same effect: the unnamed register is synchronized with the system clipboard.

    On Linux, you have essentially two clipboards: one is pretty much the same as in the other OSes (CtrlC and CtrlV in other programs, mapped to register + in Vim), the other is the "selection" clipboard (mapped to register * in Vim).

    Using only unnamedplus on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X allows you to:

    • CtrlC in other programs and put in Vim with p on all three platforms,
    • yank in Vim with y and CtrlV in other programs on all three platforms.

    If you also want to use Linux's "selection" clipboard, you will also need unnamed.

    Here is a cross-platform value:

    set clipboard^=unnamed,unnamedplus

    Reference:

    :h 'clipboard'
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