> Hi, > After reading the thread on asynchronous processes I was just looking > at the help for the ! command which I rarely use, and after playing > with it I realized that it translates a motion from normal mode into a > range for an ex command, i.e. doing !2j gives you an ex command line > of :.,+2! to start your filter with. This made me wonder: Is there a > way to do this without the filter? In other words, instead of having > to type :.,+2s I could get there with a 2j combined with something. I > realize I can do it with the ! itself by just backspacing over the ! > at the end of the ex command, but is there a more 'official' way to do > this? No, there isn't. But in your example, you know the number of lines you want to get in your range, so you can type 3: to get :.,.+2 In general: !2j has the form {operator}{motion} :h operator You can create a custom operator (and name it e.g. "g:") with :h g@ Once it has been done here (from Jan 2008, see the whole discussion) http://groups.google.com/group/vim_dev/msg/c6fb56645c188244 The details are somewhat tricky (if this reads better than ugly ...).
