Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Vim 7.1 Options

Vim 7.1 has a total of 295 (!) options that affect its behavior. Table B-4 summarizes the most important ones. Most options described in Table B-1 are not repeated here.

The summaries in this table are by necessity very brief. Much more information about each option may be found in the Vim online help.

Table B-4. Vim 7.1 set options

Option	Default	Description
autoread (ar)	noautoread	Detect whether a file inside Vim has been modified externally, not by Vim, and automatically refresh the Vim buffer with the changed version of the file.
background (bg)	dark or light	Vim tries to use background and foreground colors that are appropriate to the particular terminal. The default depends on the current terminal or windowing system.
backspace (bs)	0	Control whether you can backspace over a newline and/or over the start of insert. Values are: 0 for vi compatibility; 1 to backspace over newlines; and 2 to backspace over the start of insert. Using a value of 3 allows both.
backup (bk)	nobackup	Make a backup before overwriting a file, then leave it around after the file has been successfully written. To have a backup file just while the file is being written, use the writebackup option.
backupdir (bdir)	., ~/tmp/, ~/	A list of directories for the backup file, separated with commas. The backup file is created in the first directory in the list where this is possible. If empty, you cannot create a backup file. The name . (dot) means the same directory as where the edited file is.