How can I copy/paste pattern the current line in vim

Question

I'm trying without success to copy & paste pattern in all lines using a vim let say I've a text file which looks like this:

Hello name is Mishal
Hello name is jon
Hello name is dod
Hello name is joli
Hello name is sara 

I want to copy last pattern or any other pattern in each line and put it back in middle in the same line. so that it looks like:

Hello Mishal name is Mishal
Hello jon name is jon
Hello dod name is dod
Hello joli name is joli
Hello sara name is sara

I know it can do it with other tools such as awk,sed,cut,paste and more but i need to do it with vim

Answer 1

You can do it with macro. In normal mode type q plus any letter to start macro recording in register a.

Then move your cursor at the beginning of the line and do the following command :

3wyw^wPa

Explanation

• So 3w move cursor to 3 word
• yw copy word in registry
• ^w go to the first non-blank character then move one word forward (you need to type ^ twice in order to make it works.
• P paste word in current register before the cursor
• a space add a space after last word

Then type q to stop recording macro. Get to beginning of the line then execute macro in register "a" @a and/or @@ to execute last macro.

I'm sure there is more elegant way to do this, but this one work pretty well.

Answer 2

Try awk "as an external command" like this:

:%!awk '{print $1,$NF,$2,$3,$NF}'

 % ................... current file
 ! ................... filter
 $NF ................. last field on awk