Vim Register Trick

Well, it’s new to me.

When you type C-r in edit mode, you get the opportunity to recall the contents of a register. While I had known about this, I never thought to apply it when doing search and replace. For example, if you search for something using *, then want to replace what you’ve found with something else, you can type:

:%s/C-r//replacement/g

The contents of your last search will magically show up when you type the / character, and your days of trying to remember the pattern for the last thing you searched for are over!