Copy and Paste from Mac OS X Clipboard in VI

I really like using VI, but one of the frustrations for me was not knowing how to copy to and paste from the system clipboard. Thankfully, a search on Google took me to an article that gave a very good pointer on how to workaround the issue.

"Mac OS X clipboard sharing"
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Mac_OS_X_clipboard_sharing

Basically, the technique involved using VI's ability to execute shell commands within the context of the text editor. So, the copy/paste functions can be emulated by using the native pbcopy and pbpaste commands in Mac OS X.

• To copy, type :[range]!pbcopy


• To paste, type :r !pbpaste