VIM multi-line inserts making me crazy

[blu_discuss at seremeth.com (Steve Seremeth)]

dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 11:01:47AM -0400, Steve Seremeth wrote:
>  
>
>>I can do search and replace in the block like so:
>><C-V>
>>Use arrows (or "j") to pick your lines
>>:s/^/#/  (which turns into: ":'<,'>s/^/#/")
>><enter>
>>
>>But then vim matches the beginning of every line in the file as noted by 
>>the blinding yellow highlighted line I get up the side of my terminal.  
>>If I wanted to indent using tabs, I would highlight the block and then 
>>use ">" -- and I know I can define tab/space settings in my .vimrc, 
>>etc..  Is that my best option?  That doesn't cover me when I want to 
>>insert comment chars.
>>
>>Am I overlooking something (as I'm guessing I am)?
>>    
>>
>
>If I understand you, you want to be able to add a comment
>character at the beginning of each line. The easiest way
>to do that, IMHO, is:
>
>position your cursor at the starting line
>count how many lines you want to do this to - call it N
>:.,+Ns/^/#/
>
>Or if you have line numbering turned on, you can just say
>:12,42s/^/#/
>to do lines 12 through 42
>
>Is that what you wanted?
>  
>
I guess line numbering will cut it (and is fairly elegant) -- I've never 
used it in the past, but that's no reason not to now.  It would seem 
that there should be some easy way to do this in visual mode 
(confession: my arrow keys are practically worn out from overuse) 
though.  Also no vi. vs emacs flames either, please.  I'm sure there are 
eleventeen ways to do this in emacs.

Steve