Jump to matching XML tags in Vim

There is a vim plugin called matchit.vim . You can find it here: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=39 . It was created pretty much the exact purpose you describe.

Install that, place your cursor on the body of the tag (not the <>, else it'll match those) and press % to jump to the other tag. See the script's page to find out what else it matches.

The OP stated that what he really wanted to do is copy a section of XML without having to find the matching tag. This is easily done in normal mode with yat<motion>p, which yanks the text inside and including the matching tags, then pastes it. yit<motion>p is almost the same, but it doesn't include the outer tags.

The 'y' in the string is of course the normal mode "yank" command. (:help y)

a or i can be used for object selection after an operator such as y or inside a visual selection. The symbol after a or i specifies what should be selected. The object type t used here indicates an SGML tag. (:help object-select).

Of course <motion> just means to move somewhere by the means of your choice and p puts the yanked text at that location.

You can do this without additional plugins:

• place cursor on the tag
• vat - will select the (outer) tag and place cursor on the end
• once you've got your selection you can toggle between the top and bottom with o (update based on Michael Gruber's note)
• c - change or, y - copy or, escape for leaving visual mode ...

Another useful operation is: vit - will select content of the tag (inner).

Update (thanks to @elrado) Example: vito will enable you to select inner content of the tag and position cursor on the beginning of the selected text.

Reference: https://superuser.com/questions/182355/how-can-i-select-an-html-tags-content-in-vim

Vim reference (thanks to @Geek for noting this out):

:help visual-operators

you'll get:

4. Operating on the Visual area             *visual-operators*

The objects that can be used are:
    ...
    at  a <tag> </tag> block (with tags)        |v_at|
    it  inner <tag> </tag> block            |v_it|
    ...