Numbers.vim - better line numbers for vim

http://myusuf3.github.com/numbers.vim/

by mccarthyjm • 14 years ago

93 45 14 years ago

myusuf3.github.com

Do you really need a plugin for this?

If you want relative numbers to appear when in normal mode, and absolute line numbers to appear otherwise (e.g., when the window has lost focus), just throw this in your .vimrc:

    set rnu
    au InsertEnter * :set nu
    au InsertLeave * :set rnu
    au FocusLost * :set nu
    au FocusGained * :set rnu

Here's a gist for posterity. Feel free to fork it, leave comments on what should be changed, etc. The above has worked for me on Mac OS X for years, but there's a chance I didn't set it up the "right way". Leave comments on this gist and I'll update as necessary:

https://gist.github.com/3012145

googletron2• 14 years ago

yeah, one because you forgot to surround it with an auto group. Plus its lines you don't have to write yourself.

joshcorbin2• 14 years ago

Also useful to hook BufLeave/BufEnter and WinLeave/WinEnter imo.

masukomi• 14 years ago

I just have this in my .vimrc which lets you toggle it whatever way you want in edit mode and it stays however you leave it when you toggle modes

    " use Ctrl+L to toggle the line number counting method
    function! g:ToggleNuMode()
    	    if(&rnu == 1)
        		set nu
	    else
		    set rnu
	    endif
    endfunc
    nnoremap <C-L> :call g:ToggleNuMode()<cr>

RegEx• 14 years ago

Quick note: This requires vim 7.3

fsaintjacques• 14 years ago

Thank you for sharing!

jamesrcole• 14 years ago

You don't need one. It's a cost/benefit thing - is it worth having one? Do you really need to use Vim or Emacs or Eclipse, etc? You don't need to.

I can imagine some reasons why it might be useful to have it as a plugin. Making a plugin means giving it a name and a URL (and if it's on vim.org, a place in a well-known directory), and that makes discovery and communication of its existence easier. The fact that it's useful to have a gist for it bears this out, I think. I can't think of why it's that bad a thing to have a plugin for it.

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

One benefit of the plugin approach is that it will get forked and improved and other cool and useful things added to it. It's a central repository for all of that goodness, and keeping it up to date just requires pulling the repo (assuming you're using Pathogen or Vundle), instead of remembering to dig through vim.org/scripts periodically.

TLDR - the plugin approach gains the benefits of software evolution.

outworlder• 14 years ago

What's with the funky status bar?

mgrouchy• 14 years ago

Thats his tmux Theme(outer) inner is powerline for Vim(https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-powerline/), with a patched font.

fsniper• 14 years ago

That's what I was looking for. I love HN comments

lucisferre• 14 years ago

Was wondering that too one for tmux and a matching one for Vim. The author has his dotfiles up on Github so I'm planning on checking those out today.

joshcorbin2• 14 years ago

I'm still pondering the "how is this useful?" part... why are absolute numbers useful for you in insert mode?

solutionyogi2• 14 years ago

My exact thought. I absolutely love 'relative line numbering' as it lets me use different VIM commands without having to do math. And as I can go to any line number by typing ':<line number>' [generally reported by debugger or other means], I don't really care about actual line numbers anymore.

brown9-2• 14 years ago

In addition, if you have 'set ruler' set, the absolute line number of the current line is displayed at the bottom of the screen when in insert mode.

pwf• 14 years ago

I still feel like I have to do math (albeit simple math) with relative line numbering. If I want to yank a block of code that's X lines long, I have to look at line X, and add one to the number next to it. E.g., when I want to grab 8 lines, the last line I want to grab has a 7 next to it.

I guess I think it'd be more helpful if the numbers were inclusive, and 1-indexed. I'm not sure how to configure that though.

googletron2• 14 years ago

well when you moving around code you want to be in normal mode. so lets say you cursor is at the top of the function which would be 0 (with relative numbering) you could simply look down and see how many lines you need to delete. so for example lets say 5, then you could simply do 5dd or 5yy, without having to count all to see how many lines which can get annoying.

while in insert mode you would simply want to see what line you are one and for collaboration with others. In cases where you might want jump to a line like :15.

There is also a NumberToggle function if you ever need to switch on the go.

dionidium4• 14 years ago

If you're operating on more than just a couple lines, then it's probably a bad sign to be doing math. It's usually better to navigate to the end of the selection and set a mark or select the text in visual mode.

alinajaf• 14 years ago

I've found it occasionally useful when pairing, i.e. "no no, I mean the call on line 23, not 28".

foobarboomoo• 14 years ago

FWIW, the example you give would be more easily handled with the built in "dap" (delete a paragraph)

DougBTX• 14 years ago

Yea, that's what I had in mind while watching the video too. I remember that example as delete around paragraph, to match delete inside paragraph (dip), which differ in how they handle whitespace at the end of the paragraph. Delete inside quotes, di', and delete around quotes, da', work in the same way too.

scott_w2• 14 years ago

I know some people like line numbers, but personally, I just look at the status bar at the bottom of the buffer.

I find line numbers on the side clutter up my view too much. I always use 80 character terminal widths, to make it easier to stick to my PEP8 validation script we run.

dionidium4• 14 years ago

That's fine for determining what line you're on, but visible line numbers make it much easier to jump to a particular line. I've only recently set number in my .vimrc and wish I'd have done it sooner.

ori_b• 14 years ago

I do that by jumping to the particular line. :<linenum> or <linenum>G does that.

nathan_long• 14 years ago

They also make it much easier to find the line number named in an exception backtrace. :)

ralph• 14 years ago

Do you use (){}[] and others to move about? I rarely need to know the line number to move to on the screen.

scott_w2• 14 years ago

That only really works well if the line you want is visible.

I've found searching to be much quicker, since I know class/method/variable names more than I know line numbers - we follow reasonably standard names for things in the projects we work on.

guns• 14 years ago

I just tried turning off line numbers, and you're right, it's great. They really don't provide enough value to justify taking 4 columns on every vertical split.

I use a pretty large font size for my terminal, and the extra 8 columns finally allows for two 80 column vertical splits on my laptop. Thanks for the suggestion!

kamaal• 14 years ago

Its these kind of things that I wish to see vanilla vim shipped with, without bothering the user much.

Yes you can toss some commands and code snippets at me and ask me to use them to get these features. But not having to type commands/snippets and have all goodies out of the box is what modern text editors like sublime text are all about.

rhizome2• 14 years ago

If you don't like typing, vim is not the right editor for you!

__float• 14 years ago

There's a difference in productive typing and typing to set up your editor. I would compare this to the popularity in Ubuntu vs Arch, too.

ary• 14 years ago

Actually I'm more interested in seeing this guy's tmux config file.

hoov• 14 years ago

He's got that on github, too: https://github.com/myusuf3/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux

lloeki• 14 years ago

https://github.com/myusuf3/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux

blackRust• 14 years ago

As someone with a low-bandwidth connection and that I often work in cafés I hate it when the only description available is through video when there could easily have been text and screenshots.

antidoh• 14 years ago

Or when you're behind a corporate firewall that prohibits youtube.

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

Even on high bandwidth connections it's annoying. My read speed is much higher bandwidth than videos for things that can be explained in a paragraph or three.

Videos should probably be used when:

1. Your audience is non-technical.

2. A (moving) picture is worth a thousand words (eg, words can't do it justice, but a quick video can).

3. You're not bandwidth constrained (or firewalled).

4. You're not just video'ing text entry, or if you must, you ensure the user can zoom in or enlarge the video to see it (the embedded video can't be enlarged, I had to open it in Youtube to actually see it).

ilja• 14 years ago

There's also https://github.com/jeffkreeftmeijer/vim-numbertoggle which seems to do the same thing. I've been using that for a few months but i'm still not sure it's actually an improvement. It gets in the way almost as much as being actually useful.

gaving• 14 years ago

Anyone else just use visual mode for that kinna stuff?

Numbers.vim - better line numbers for vim

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