Showing a different background colour in Vim past 80 characters

Question

I have seen Vim 80 column layout concerns, but the answer there highlights only actual content that goes over the 80 character mark. I want to have a 100+ column Vim window

Answer 1

try:

:/\%>80v./+

it will mark +80 characters as error

Answer 2

I don't think that it's possible to have what you want, but I following this question since I am interested in such a thing myself.

Maybe, I am stating the obvious, but you could setup the highligth in the 70th+ columns to get an indication of how close you get to the 80th column.

Answer 3

If you have Vim >= v7.3, you can simply add this to your .vimrc to highlight 81 and onward (so 80 is your last valid column):

let &colorcolumn=join(range(81,999),",")

If you don't see a highlight, you may not have a ColorColumn highlight color set. Add this (adjust to suit your preferences):

highlight ColorColumn ctermbg=235 guibg=#2c2d27

Now I like to highlight column 80 as well as 120 and onward, so I have separate "warning" and "danger" markers. You can do that thusly:

let &colorcolumn="80,".join(range(120,999),",")

Example

Here's a screenshot of GVim editing my .vimrc.

I use Ubuntu Mono 11 font and the molokai color scheme. You can find my vim config and all of my dotfiles on GitHub.

Answer 4

Solution proposed in comment above. Highlight your background first then highlight the ColorColumn black as an overlay. Set your colorcolumn to lines 1-80.

hi Normal guibg=#32322f ctermbg=236
hi NonText guibg=#32322f ctermbg=236
hi ColorColumn guibg=#000000 ctermbg=0
let &colorcolumn=join(range(1,80),",")

Answer 5

Highlight 81 column

:set textwidth=80
:set colorcolumn=+1

You may also make some styling:

:hi ColorColumn guibg=#2d2d2d ctermbg=246

Answer 6

For those using onedark.vim like me that wants a solution posted by Conner, I added these lines to my vimrc file

let &colorcolumn=join(range(1,80),",")
let g:onedark_color_overrides = {
  \ "black": {"gui": "#2C323C", "cterm": "236", "cterm16": "8"},
  \ "cursor_grey": {"gui": "#282C34", "cterm": "235", "cterm16": "0"}
  \ }

I just swapped the two values, took it from the source code of onedark