Vim Insert (Capital) "I" Command

[maniacinthemailbox]

I have been a long time Vim user, but one issue that has always
perplexed me is inserting a line of text before a range of lines. I'm
not sure if this is within the scope of Vim or if a different program
would be more ideal (awk?) but here it is. I am trying to insert "sed
s^" in front of a range of lines (3-39). I tried typing (:3,39I "sed
s^") (without parentheses) but it returned with the error "The I
command is unknown". Could this be due to compatibility mode? Does
this work for anyone else? Are there any vi derivatives that have this
function? Thank you for any information!

[Bastian Erdnuess]

maniacinthemailbox wrote:

'I' is not a command line command. It works as you expect only in
Visual Block mode. To do what you intended press

3G<Ctrl-v>39GI

in Normal mode (<Ctrl-v> is one unit). Now write "sed ^". It only
appears at the beginning of the 3rd line. When you press <ESC> now, it
will appear everywhere at the beginning of the lines in the given range.

Cheers,
Bastian

[Mikolaj Machowski]

maniacinthemailbox scripsit:

I is Normal mode command, to use range in Ed mode:

:3,39s/^/sed s^/

m.