A less powerful but much simpler alternative to using the registers is the Yankring plugin (<a href="https://github.com/vim-scripts/YankRing.vim" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vim-scripts/YankRing.vim</a>)<p>With that anything you have ever yanked or deleted is in the ring and when you paste something you can easily rotate through the items in the ring. Basically you type 'p' to paste and if that's not what you wanted you keep pressing ctrl-p until you get what you want.
This was an incredibly helpful article. Tom Ryder's written a lot of other blog posts that were really insightful and enlightening as well. I even learned how to use ed from him.
Always glad to see vim usage articles pop up now and then. Here's a similar HN thread from a while ago -
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2870024" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2870024</a>
A useful article for at least intermediate VIM users.<p>Regarding the system clipboard register: in OS X 10.8 the `"+` register no longer works. Has anyone found a way to get it working again?