Vim's relativenumber setting and multiple buffers

Question

I like the relative number setting. I'm refactoring code at the moment (translation: explodicating 5 year old terrible methods and replacing them with nice code) and I find it useful to have the setting active on files as I open them

I frequently either open multiple buffers or use a client/server vim to contain all my open buffers/files and have noticed that the relative number only seems to apply to the first buffer (and not the remaining buffers when I have set rnu in my .vimrc file.)

Is it expected behaviour for rnu to only initially apply to the first buffer until you manually set it?

Answer 1

Yes, it is expected behavior, unless you explicitly set it globally with ":setglobal":

:setglobal relativenumber

See ":help :setglobal" and ":help 'relativenumber'" (with the single quotes as part of the command).

Answer 2

No, it isn't expected behavior. If you set something, it applies both locally and globally.

Command                   global value    local value

set option=value          set             set
setlocal option=value     -               set
setglobal option=value    set             -
set option?               -               display
setlocal option?          -               display
setglobal option?         display         -

(Table to be found at the end of :help :setglobal.)

That's exactly what I'm seeing here, too. I set rnu in my vimrc once and it applies to all new buffers, windows, and tabs.

Try :verbose set rnu? | verbose setg rnu? when and where it ceases to work to find out what last changed it.

Answer 3

I am not sure if you want the same behavior as me... to have all buffers use relativenumber by default. If that is the case then you would think set relativenumber in .vimrc would work but it doesn't. Instead I used autocmd BufEnter * set relativenumber.