some Vi shortcuts

 Copy and paste one line

With the cursor at your desired line press yy. Press p wherever you like and the line will be pasted below the line you are on. The y stands for “yank”.

Cut and paste one line

With the cursor at your desired line press dd. Press p wherever you like and the line will be pasted below the line you are on. The d stands for “delete”.

Copy and paste multiple lines

With the cursor at your desired line press nyy, where n is the number of lines down you want to copy. So if you want to copy 2 lines, press 2yy. To paste press p and the number of lines copied will be pasted below the line you are on now.

Cut and paste multiple lines

With the cursor at your desired line press ndd, where n is the number of lines down you want to copy. So if you want to copy 2 lines, press 2dd. To paste press p and the number of lines copied will be pasted below the line you are on now.

Copy and paste one word in a line

Move the cursor to your desired word. It can be any part of the word and press yiw, which stands for yank inner word. Press p and your word will be pasted after the cursor.

Cut and paste one word in a line

Move the cursor to your desired word. It can be any part of the word and press diw, which stands for delete inner word. Press p and your word will be pasted after the cursor.

Copy and paste part of a word or line

Mover the cursor to your desired word. Press v, which will enter you into visual mode. Move your cursor around to highlight the words or parts of words you want to copy then press y. Press p and your selection will be pasted after the cursor.

Cut and paste part of a word or line

Mover the cursor to your desired word. Press v, which will enter you into visual mode. Move your cursor around to highlight the words or parts of words you want to cut then press d. Press p and your selection will be pasted after the cursor.

Some other commands

I think we get the pattern. Here are some other commands:

x   deletes/cuts the single character under the cursor
Nx  deletes/cuts N characters starting with the character under the cursor
dw  deletes/cuts the rest of the word the cursor is on starting with the character under the cursor
dNW deletes/cuts the N words starting with the character under the cursor
D   Delete the remainder of the line starting with the character under the cursor.

If you swicth d or x with y you get the same effect but with a copy instead of a cut. Note that Y copys the whole line not the remainder.

Ref: http://ahmed.amayem.com/copy-or-cut-and-paste-in-vi-linux-tutorial/