Visual block mode

Visual block mode is probably my least used variant of visual mode, but it’s still extremely useful. It allows you to visually select a rectangular region of text, independent of the characters under the cursor.

It’s definitely easiest to understand visual block mode by example.

To enter visual block mode, type <C-v> (control V) in the editor. You’ll notice that you can move the cursor any way you like to draw a rectangular selection over the text.

This time, try deleting all of the ? characters at the start of the lines. Once again, you can use the x key to delete in visual block mode. Work through the checklist below.