Color active line

This tip is deprecated for the following reasons:

In Vim 7 you can put ":set cursorline" in your vimrc.

Duplicate tip

This tip is very similar to the following:

• VimTip421
• VimTip769
• VimTip1279

These tips need to be merged – see the merge guidelines.

Tip 263 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created June 18, 2002 · complexity basic · author Armin Rehm · version 6.0

---

This tip shows how to color the active line, the line in which the cursor is, for better reading.

You should try possibility 2 before 1, IMHO it is mostly usable.

Possibility 1

:au! CursorHold * let @/ = '\%' . line('.') . 'l.*'
:set ut=500

Explanation

After 500 ms of waiting for you to hit a key, Vim sets the search register to a pattern that matches the current line.

Problem

Register / holds the search pattern, so you cannot have color the active line and search.

Therefore another solution:

Possibility 2

 :highlight CurrentLine guibg=darkgrey guifg=white (or whatever colors you want)
 :au! Cursorhold * exe 'match CurrentLine /\%' . line('.') . 'l.*/'
 :set ut=100

Explanation

This solution uses 'match' to highlight a string, it does not interface with the current search pattern.

Addition

Turning the highlighning off:

:au! Cursorhold
:match none

The order of these commands are important. If :match none is executed first, the autocommand would almost immediately execute another match command.

References

• :help Cursorhold
• :help 'ut'
• :help /\%l
• :help /]
• :help \%

Comments

It should be noted that the CursorHold event is not updated within insert mode.

---

I wrote a script to do this that will work in insert mode. By the way, it has problems if there is a delimiter on the line that you are trying to highlight.

• Press F2 to highlight a line.
• Press F3 to unhighlight the line

The current version is below.

" Vim plugin file
" Description:
" Maintainer: Torrin
" Last Change: 2002 JUN 21
" Version: 2

" If we have already loaded this file, don't load it again.
if exists("loaded_highlightline")
  finish
endif
let loaded_highlightline=1

" Save compatable options
let s:save_cpo = &cpo
set cpo&vim
let linehighlighted=0

map <F2> :call <SID>HighlightLine()<CR>
map <F3> :call <SID>UnHighlightLine()<CR>
imap <F2> <C-O>:call <SID>HighlightLine()<CR>
imap <F3> <C-O>:call <SID>UnHighlightLine()<CR>

function! s:HighlightLine()
  " execute "syntax keyword OneLine \"" . getline(".") . "\""
  if g:linehighlighted == 1
    call <SID>UnHighlightLine()
  endif
  execute "syntax match OneLine +" . getline(".") . "+ oneline"
  execute "highlight default link OneLine Visual"
  let g:linehighlighted = 1
endfunction

function! s:UnHighlightLine()
  if g:linehighlighted == 1
    execute "syntax clear OneLine"
    let g:linehighlighted = 0
  endif
endfunction

let &cpo = s:save_cpo
unlet s:save_cpo

I've just added the script above to the archive as script#319.

---

VimTip769 is the best choice

---