Scrolling down both parts of a split-window at the same time in Vim

vim

Is it possible to scroll down the left and right parts of a vertically split window in Vim? I have two files I would like to compare roughly. Each line of these files looks almost the same.

Best Solution

Go to the first split, and type in

:set scrollbind

Go to the next one (ctrl+w), and do the same.

To disable:

:set noscrollbind

For more info, check the documentation for scroll binding - http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/scroll.html#scroll-binding

Related Solutions

Using Vim’s tabs like buffers

Stop, stop, stop.

This is not how Vim's tabs are designed to be used. In fact, they're misnamed. A better name would be "viewport" or "layout", because that's what a tab is—it's a different layout of windows of all of your existing buffers.

Trying to beat Vim into 1 tab == 1 buffer is an exercise in futility. Vim doesn't know or care and it will not respect it on all commands—in particular, anything that uses the quickfix buffer (:make, :grep, and :helpgrep are the ones that spring to mind) will happily ignore tabs and there's nothing you can do to stop that.

Instead:

:set hidden
If you don't have this set already, then do so. It makes vim work like every other multiple-file editor on the planet. You can have edited buffers that aren't visible in a window somewhere.
Use :bn, :bp, :b #, :b name, and ctrl-6 to switch between buffers. I like ctrl-6 myself (alone it switches to the previously used buffer, or #ctrl-6 switches to buffer number #).
Use :ls to list buffers, or a plugin like MiniBufExpl or BufExplorer.

Vim 80 column layout concerns

As of vim 7.3, you can use set colorcolumn=80 (set cc=80 for short).

Since earlier versions do not support this, my .vimrc uses instead:

if exists('+colorcolumn')
  set colorcolumn=80
else
  au BufWinEnter * let w:m2=matchadd('ErrorMsg', '\%>80v.\+', -1)
endif

Best Solution

Related Solutions

Using Vim’s tabs like buffers

Vim 80 column layout concerns

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