Is it possible to display indentation guides in Vim?

Question

I\'m a longtime Vim user (3 or 4 years) who has recently started dealing with some deeply nested code. This code is indented with spaces, not tabs. I would like some clean

Answer 1

NOTE: This answer is a bit late to the party and also a shameless plug :)

Regardless, try my Indent-Guides.vim plugin. It was created to scratch my own itch regarding the lack of indent guides in vim. I got fed-up waiting for someone else to come along and build it, so I just did it myself.

Features:

• Can detect both tab and space indent styles.
• Automatically inspects your colorscheme and picks appropriate colors (gVim only).
• Will highlight indent levels with alternating colors.
• Full support for gVim and basic support for Terminal Vim.
• Seems to work on Windows gVim 7.3 (haven't done any extensive tests though).
• Customizable size for indent guides, eg. skinny guides (soft-tabs only).
• Customizable start indent level.

Here's a few screenshots of the plugin in action: put your mouse here and click.

Answer 2

use the Indent-Guides.vim plugin, and toggle use ig whenever you need it. Sometimes it could be annoying though :)

Answer 3

The following command will configure Vim to show dots to indicate the indentation level as you type. The dots magically disappear when the cursor leaves the line:

:set list listchars=tab:»-,trail:·,extends:»,precedes:«

Answer 4

Try out this VIM plugin BlockHL It color codes the indentation of each successive level differently.

EDIT:What lanaguge are you using? This plugin is for C-style languages.

Answer 5

You might use tabs to display indentation guides and remove tabs before saving file:

" use 4 spaces for tabs
set tabstop=4 softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4

" display indentation guides
set list listchars=tab:❘-,trail:·,extends:»,precedes:«,nbsp:×

" convert spaces to tabs when reading file
autocmd! bufreadpost * set noexpandtab | retab! 4

" convert tabs to spaces before writing file
autocmd! bufwritepre * set expandtab | retab! 4

" convert spaces to tabs after writing file (to show guides again)
autocmd! bufwritepost * set noexpandtab | retab! 4

Answer 6

If you indent code with spaces, you can try my plugin: https://github.com/Yggdroot/indentLine, it displays thin vertical lines but not thick vertical lines as the above answers mentions. If you indent code with tab, just :set list lcs=tab:\|\ (here is a space)