[[!meta title="The power of vim: mail editing"]]

In this article I will show you some of the mappings I use within
vim for mail editing.

## Background

I am a console centric person, using 
[mutt](http://www.mutt.org/) and 
[vim](http://www.vim.org/) for mails.
I use one e-mail address per person or situation
(i.e. you can reach me at nico-thepowerofvim at schottelius.org).
to be able to filter or delete e-mail addresses easily.

## Macros / Mappings

One of the really nice things of vim is being able to use macros
([map](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_05.html#05.3) in
vim slang).

### Replace Mail Address (static)

Many times I would like to replace the mail address mutt selected
for sending with my company address. For this I use a mapping assigned to F2:

    map <F2> G$/^From:<CR>/<<CR>lc/><CR>nico.schottelius --AT-- ungleich.ch<ESC>/^$<CR>

This essentially finds the first From: line, removes everything betwenn < and > and inserts my company mail address.


### Replace Mail Address (dynamic)

In most cases however, I use a mail address in the style
**nico-something@schottelius.org** (there is no catch all, if you were thinking about this). I have mutt setup to use 
**nico-something@schottelius.org** as the from address and have a 
macro mapped to F3 that allows me to replace the part after 
**nico-** until the **@** easily:

    <F3> G$/^From:<CR>/<nico-<CR>wwlc/@<CR>

### Replace everything until the signature

Quite often I am done with replying to an email, but have 
leftovers from the original mail. To be able to delete everything
easily until the end of the mail (i.e. until -- and a space),
I use F4:

    map <F4> c/^-- <CR>




[[!tag net unix]]