I am trying to find a shortcut to place a custom comment sequence on my code, e.g.: /* start of comment blah end of comment /**/ (it is easier to void the comment by just adding a / to the beginning) I would like to do this in Vim by selecting a visual line, block or char and adding '/' characters at the beginning of the block and '/*/' at the end, plus newlines. After selecting some lines (Shift-V) I tried this: '<,'>s/\(.*\)/\/*\r\1\r\/**\// But it adds the comment chars at EACH newline. How can I only apply the substitution at the beginning and end of the selected range? Thanks gm