Vim Tip: Copy & Paste Search Results

This is a quick tip to capture search results in Vim to a register, and paste them into another document.

The sample text

Lemon cake
Chocolate cake
Chocolate chip cookies
Oatmeal cookies
German chocolate cake
Mamorkuchen
Peanut butter cookies

I want to copy all the lines containing chocolate, and paste them into a new document. Here is the sequence of commands:

:redir @a        --start capturing in register a
:g/chocolate     --execute search
:redir END       --close register a
:new             --create a new document
:put! a          --paste contents of register a into the new document

Thats it. Now I can finally recycle this little cheatsheet I created back in 2011!

Bonus tip: Count occurrences of a pattern in Vim:

:%s/chocolate//n