how to copy something from vim editor to shell command line

Question

I intend to copy something from vim editor to shell command line. I have tried many ways, but I find all of them only work when in the same vim editor. My need is to copy and paste between vim editor and shell command line. That's, vim -> shell

PS: I am using putty.

EDIT:

BTW, what if just copy something from vim editor and paste it to terminal both in a unix/linux box?

ATTENTION:

output of :echo has("X11") in vim is 0, so my system does not support X11!

Answer 1

If your vim version >= 7.3.74, you can set the vim to use the system clipboard by default by adding a line to your .vimrc:

set clipboard=unnamedplus

for the detail, see this link. Then you use the y(ank) command in vim, the content is in the system clipboard.

EDIT:
this solution and the "*y solution require the Vim that has clipboard support. Since you're lack of that, use cat/grep/less/tail... to extract the text you want to copy.

Answer 2

" + y to yank text in vim, then ctrl + shift + v to paste in the terminal.

Answer 3

from the comments, it seems that your mouse middle button works for * buffer, you can select text in vim, then press: 3 keystrokes:

"*y

and switch to other program, terminal, browser or whatever, click mouse middle to get yanked text.

read :h y for details, how to yank text and save in a specific register (in this case, it is register *)

Answer 4

Using pipe

Select line[s] by using V command then execute this selection by command :'<,'>w !sh