Vi commenting out

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006, Michael Hipp wrote:
>Is there any simple trick for having vi comment out a whole range of lines by 
>placing a '#' in front of them? The manual method of i # ESC j is rather 
>tedious if there is a big section to be done.

Position the cursor on the top line you want to comment.  Press
``ma'' (Mark A) to set a mark there.

Position the cursor at the bottom of the range.  Enter this
command which says to operate over the range from the marked a to
the current line ('a indicates the mark a, `b would be mark b).

:'a,.s/^/#/<RETURN>

One could also do ``I#<ESC>'' then press ``j.'' to go down a line
and repeat the previous command for as many lines as you like.

Bill
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