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I would like to show the current column in the statusbar, as is common in many other text editors. E.g. it's good to know if you are around column 80 or above.

How to show the current column in the statusbar?

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2 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

Try if setting 'ruler' option is what you are looking for. On my computer at the bottom right shows the line and column where I have the cursor.

:set ruler

EDIT TO COMMENTS:

From the help of vim (command :help ruler):

If the number of characters displayed is different from the number of bytes in the text (e.g., for a TAB or a multi-byte character), both the text column (byte number) and the screen column are shown, separated with a dash.

You can try changing it with rulerformat option, like :set rulerformat=%l,%v

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Yes, kind of. But that is showing a strange value e.g. 23,62-68 were 23 seem to be the line. How should I interpret 62-68 for the column? – Jonas Dec 6 '11 at 20:49
2  
62 is counting tabs as one character, 68 is counting expanded tabs – RedGrittyBrick Dec 6 '11 at 20:58
1  
From command ':help ruler': "If the number of characters displayed is different from the number of bytes in the text (e.g., for a TAB or a multi-byte character), both the text column (byte number) and the screen column are shown, separated with a dash." You can try changing it with 'rulerformat' option, like ':set rulerformat=%l,%v' – Birei Dec 6 '11 at 21:00
Thanks, maybe you should add that to your answer. – Jonas Dec 6 '11 at 23:36
up vote 5 down vote

See :help statusline for the many options available.

I have this in my ~/.vimrc in between a bunch of other directives:

set statusline+=col:\ %c,

which outputs

col: 64

in my statusline.

I don't have set ruler.

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This doesn't work for me. I probably need some more settings. – Jonas Dec 6 '11 at 23:34

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