How to get visually selected text in VimScript
vim
Solution
I'm not totally sure about the context here, because `getpos()` can indeed accept marks (like `'<` and `'>`) as arguments.
However, to take a stab at what you might be asking for, there's also `v`, which is like `'<` except it's always updated (i.e. while the user is still in visual mode). This can be used in combination with `.`, the current cursor position, which will then represent the end of the visual selection.
Edit: I found these in `:help line()`; several functions including `line()` and `getpos()` have the same set of possible arguments.
Edit: I guess you're probably simply asking how to get the text between two arbitrary marks, not going line-by-line... (i.e. this doesn't specifically pertain to visual mode). I don't think there actually is a way. Yes, this seems like a pretty glaring omission. You should be able to fake it by finding the marks with `getpos()`, getting all the lines with `getline()`, then chopping off on the first and last according to the column position (with casework depending on whether or not it's multi-line). Sorry it's not a real answer, but at least you can wrap it up in a function and forget about it.
Problem
I'm able to get the cursor position with `getpos()`, but I want to retrieve the selected text within a line, that is `'<,'>`. How's this done? UPDATE I think I edited out the part where I explained that I want to get this text from a Vim script...