VIM textwidth has no effect

Question

This feels like a dumb question, but I can\'t find an answer on the Internet (or in VIM help). I\'m using VIM 7.2 on Mac OS X. All I want to do is wrap my lines at 72 characters

Answer 1

I had this exact same issue and found the following solved the issue well enough for me:

autocmd FileType python setlocal textwidth=79 formatoptions+=t

Feel free to change python to be your file type of choice (e.g. * or comma separated list python,ruby,go,sh,javascript)

See :h fo-table for details of formatoptions