How to select a whole HTML block, including the tags in VIM?

Question

Suppose I have:

<div id="help">
    <table>
        ...
        ...
        ...
    </table>
</div>

How do I select the whole block, starting from <div id="help">?

Answer 1

vat, as in Heptite's answer is the way to go.

Note that, depending on where the cursor is, you may need to type at a few more times until the whole <div> is selected.

Supposing the cursor is in a <td> you'd need vatatatat to select the whole <div>:

<div>      ^  at
  <table>  |  at
    <tr>   |  at
      <td> | vat

Another option would be to search backward for di(v) or he(lp) and select the whole tag with vat:

?di<CR>vat

Answer 2

Place your cursor within the opening or the closing tag and type "vat".

See:

:help text-objects
:help v_at