Work Smarter, Not Harder.
If I knew about these coding tricks earlier in my career, it would have saved me sooo much time. Here are 5 advanced copy and pasting tips that you can use to work smarter and more efficiently.
You can follow along with the sample dataset below, or better yet, try it with your own data. FYI— I’m using Mac and Visual Studio Code, but feel free to use other OS and text editors.
Sample dataset
| 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene | |
| Be Here Now - Ram Dass | |
| Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink and Leif Babin | |
| How to Eat - Thich Nhat Hanh | |
| How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie | |
| Radical Focus - Christina Wodtke | |
| ReWork - Jason Fried & David Hansson | |
| Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari | |
| Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts | |
| Soft Skills - John Sonmez | |
| Tao of Wu - RZA | |
| The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho | |
| The Art of War - Sun Tzu | |
| The Book of Mistakes - Skip Prichard | |
| The Culture Code - Daniel Coyle | |
| The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz |
1. Vertical selection
My objective is to add the <li> tag in front of every row. Instead of doing it the old fashion way of copy and pasting multiple times, I do it once with the help of vertical selection.
hold shift + option + cmd + arrow direction
2. Adding value to the start of every row
Another way to add value to the start of every row is by using regex (.*). This is built into most text editors and can be found in the find feature.
Regex or regular expression is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern.
1. Open Find and Replace
2. Enable regex .*
3. Enter ^ in Find
4. Enter value in replace
5. Execute
3. Adding value to the end of every row
What if I want to add the closing tag at the end of every row? To do so, I would also use regex, but with a different search pattern.
1. Open Find and Replace
2. Enable regex .*
3. Enter $ in Find
4. Enter value in replace
5. Execute
4. Shifting rows without highlighting and dragging
What happens if I want to quickly rearrange my data? Again, I can use the traditional cut and paste or highlighting and dragging with the mouse... but there is a faster way.
hold option + arrow direction
5. Copy and pasting without copy and pasting
This last tip is one of my favorites. Instead of copy and pasting and entering new lines in between, I can quickly duplicate the values with a simple shortcut key.
hold shift + option + arrow direction
Wrapping up
Copy and pasting stuff is great. Regex and advanced keyboard shortcuts takes it to another level. Have another tip for coders to increase productivity? Leave a comment below.
Remember folks: work smarter, not harder.
Thanks for reading! Originally posted on The Startup.
Top comments (7)
Nice tips ! Loved the 3rd point.
You can also mention a visual studio trick where you can paste data from your clipboard history. Simply press cntrl + shift + V and you can access your visaul studio clipboard history.
Thanks for reading nareshravlani!
I tried using
cntrl + shift + V, but it doesn't work for me! Perhaps it's a windows thing?Oh yes, it works on windows!
Comments from someone on Win10/VS2017:
1) Shift + Alt works here (regardless of where you are in the line)
I couldn't replicate 4) and 5) at this time, but there is likely something I'm missing.
I think 4) might be
alt+shift+arrow directionand 5) might bectrl+shift+Dbut that might have been my personal key layoutThanks for reading and sharing your OS/text editor Simon!
Not sure what the hot keys are for 4) and 5) since Im using Mac. It's probably a combination with ctrl, alt, shift, and arrow directions. Perhaps a windows user can point us in the right direction?
can u make it copy and paste so i can paste it on my vscode****