I'm trying to configure Vim so that it always wraps at x-number of columns automatically, at all times such as in this other editor that I provided a screenshot of-
Use :set wrap and :set textwidth=N . For permanent effect add the wrap settings to the vim start-up file .vimrc
set wrap
set textwidth=X
To apply the wrapping to an existing file, move to the start of the file (you can use gg to do this). Then type gqG to apply the re-formatting to the entire file.
Also setting a margin may be useful:
set wrapmargin=0
If you want hard wrapping, i.e. real reformatting of the text by inserting newline characters, the 'textwidth' setting (as outlined in suspectus's answer) is the key. You need to reformat existing text, e.g. via the gq command.
For soft wrapping, i.e. where long lines just appear to be broken in the editor window, :set wrap will always fill the entire available window space; you cannot restrict that to take less. Either resize the Vim window, or add a padding buffer to the right that restricts the available space to the current window. For the latter, my LimitWindowSize plugin may be helpful.
Judging from the second screenshot, you seemed to want soft-wrap. This answer suggests a way to achieve a soft-wrap effect .
I'm generalizing the solution a bit compared to the one I referred to, but basically
use :set nuw to see how many columns the line numbers are occupying, let's call this nuw.
then use :set columns=x where x = (the number of columns you want + nuw).
Note that the columns is automatically reset to window width once you resize the window, so this manual setting is not persistent.
Related
I am trying that in the editor vi, limit the number of characters per line you can do. Once you reach those x characters, break the line with a carriage return. For example: limit 50 characters.
I have not seen that there is any command (like :set nu to write the numbers of the lines in editor vi) or something similar to activate it.
I know that in order for it to take effect I have to create the file ~/.vimrc but there I don't know how to edit it so that when I later create a file, I restrict it.
Are you really using vi? You are probably using vim. If so, :help will answer most of your _I don't know_s. From there, you can also jump to specific parts of the help following the links (you recognize them as they are likely colored, bolded, or highligthed somehow) by hitting Ctrl+] (and yes, you can also enter :help ctrl-] to see the help on the key combination I've just mentioned).
In order to do what you want, it is enough that you put set textwidth=50 or set tw=50 in your ~/.vimrc file (note that a value of zero for tw means that the option is disabled, or if you prefer, that tw is infinite). If you want to look at the description of this option, enter :help textwidth.
This setting (:set tw=50), however, won't change already existing lines; in order to change all the already existing lines according to the current setting of tw, you can do gggqG, which moves to the first line (gg) and then formats the lines (gq, for info enter :help gq, which will also reveal the reason why this command will have an effect even if tw is 0) till to the last line (G moves to last line of file).
I would like vim to scroll horizontally like nano does, by scrolling only the current line, not the whole screen.
I tried playing with nowrap and scrolloff settings, without success.
Here are some screenshots (with the cursor at the end of a long line) to explain myself.
Nano:
Vim (wrap):
Vim (nowrap):
Thanks!
No, Vim cannot do this, and I think it would be hard to implement this in a way that isn't inconsistent or confusing to the user. There would need to be an indicator (like with side scrolling) that only the current line is scrolled. Also in Vim, there are several commands (like j / k and i_CTRL-Y / i_CTRL-E) that refer to the same column in above / below lines. A partially scrolled view state would make it difficult to use those.
That said, you can sort-of achieve this with a hack: The foldtext of folded lines does not scroll horizontally. So if you fold each individual line (other than the current one) via a custom 'foldexpr', set the fold text to be the line's text, and automatically close all surrounding folds, you'll get this. However, as you'll lose syntax highlighting and "normal" folding, this is more for demonstration than an actual solution.
I have tabstop=4 and expandtab set in my vimrc. Is there a way of making Vim automatically set the tab width value based on what is used in the file that is currently being edited, or do I have to set it manually each time I edit something that doesn't use 4 spaces per tab?
You can try vim-sleuth.
This plugin automatically adjusts 'shiftwidth' and 'expandtab' heuristically based on the current file, or, in the case the current file is new, blank, or otherwise insufficient, by looking at other files of the same type in the current and parent directories. In lieu of adjusting 'softtabstop', 'smarttab' is enabled.
Another plugin, YAIFA
This plug-in will automatically try to detect the kind of indentation in your file and set Vim's options to keep it that way. It recognizes three types of indentation:
1.- Space: Only spaces are used to indent.
2.- Tab: Only tabs are used.
3.- Mixed: A combination of tabs and space is used. e.g.: a tab stands for 8 spaces, but each indentation level is 4 spaces.
The values of 'expandtab' and 'shiftwidth' set in your vimrc will be used as the default values.
It works like a charm.
autotab.c analyzes an up to 5000 line sample of a file to determine the expandtab, tabstop and shiftwidth parameters.
It uses a fairly elaborate algorithm which actually renders the sample using different tab sizes to figure out which one produces the nicest line-over-line alignment based on various heuristics.
Written in C, it's very fast (no noticeable delay when loading a file) and has no dependencies other than a few functions in the standard C library.
I have several C files, in which the lines exceed more than 80 columns. I need to wrap them to a 80 column boundary and at the same time maintain proper C syntax. Is this possible in Vim?
I have seen several solutions on the web for doing it on a normal text file. Also, have found tricks to do wrapping in a C file, which is about to be edited. But not for existing C files.
Any tools for achieving this apart from Vim are also welcome.
If you edit c-sources it is likely that you set the cindent option. Unfortunately the textwidth option doesn't work with cindent.
For your purpose artistic style, although it's a very nice program isn't recommended either since it doesn't support the breaking of long lines.
To get what you want i use gnu indent and set equalprg to
let &equalprg= "indent -l80 -i" . &shiftwidth . " <optional args>"
and add
map <leader>i mzgg=G`z
to my ~/.vimrc. With that pressing <leader>i reformats the whole file without changing the cursor's position.
Another possibility would be to add an autocommand that indents the source on every write, like
autocmd BufWrite *.c execute "%!".&equalprg
With vim you could do that with :set tw=79 and gggqG. However, it is not context-aware so you will need to restore certain lines (for example, lines with long strings in them).
For an external tool you might want to look at Artistic Style, which reformat lines where reformatting is not hard (for example, lines containing a {).
This question already has answers here:
How to clear the line number in Vim when copying?
(12 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
So I've figured out how to add line numbers to vim (:set no or :set number) but how can I make it so that when I use my mouse in a terminal emulator to select a block of lines, it does not also select the numbers?
For example, say I have three lines that look like so in vim:
1 First line
2 Second
3 Third
If I want to select the three lines with the mouse what I want is for it to ONLY select the actual text. But what ends up happening is it selects the line numbers as well as all the space to the left and right of the line numbers.
Is there any way to change this behavior? BTW, I'm using the gnome terminal editor in gnome if that makes a difference.
Use the following:
:set mouse=a
to turn on xterm style mousing in all modes. This will allow you to do what you want. Keep in mind if the vim is remote via ssh, you'll need X11 forwarding turned on for the selection to make it to your local clipboard.
AFAIK, that is not possible.
The only thing I can add at the moment is that you'd be better off with
:set invnumber
It will inverse the current condition, so you can map it to a key, and toggle it. That way you don't have to remember two commands.
I agree with the first answer. If you use gvim, you can experiment with using set mouse=n and set mouse=a, which should change the line number selecting behavior.
When I want to select text into a terminal, I remove line numbers.
:set nonu
When I finished
:set nu
You're probably not on a Macintosh, and I can't tell if you mean you want to use system copy rather than vim's yank.
But if you are both those things, you can use option-drag to select text. This creates a 2d box over the text, selecting things that are under it. It should be functionally the same as 'take columns x1 to x2 of rows y1 to y2'.
I'm pretty sure this is not possible in terminal-vim. There is no accepted standard (e.g. a TTY escape) for indicating blocks of characters that aren't highlightable by mouse, as far as I know.
I would use gvim if you want to be able to do this at any cost. Its behavior is as you describe.
My recommendation is to get used to the little box on the right hand corner of the screen which has the current line's number and character position information. Before I used vim I could never imagine living without line numbers, but since then I've moved beyond this. Not having line numbers clutter up the screen allows for distraction free code viewing, and do you really need to know that the line number above your current active line is one less than your current line's number, and the line below is one more?
A copy without mouse:
Enter Visual mode: Position your cursor, press v (For complete line V) move up or down until desired position
Press control + c to copy into clipboard (if +clipboard exists in :ve command output) press ESC and paste it wherever you want with control + v.
Or press y to yank into register and press p to put the text after the cursor