In VIM, how do I break one really long line into multiple lines?

Question

Say I have a super long line in the VIM editor (say around 300+ characters). How would I break that up into multiple lines so that the word boundaries roughly break at 80 chara

Answer 1

To split long lines in the complete document without removing already present line breaks, use:

:set formatoptions+=w
:set tw=80
gggqG

Answer 2

First set your vim so that it understands that you want 80 characters:

:set tw=80

then, hilight the line:

V

and make vim reformat it:

gq

Answer 3

For solid lines of text highlight the area using v in normal mode, then press

:s/\v(.{80})/\1\r/g

This will add a newline at the end of every 80th character.

:s/       replaces within the current select
\v        uses regular expressions
(.{80})   selects 80 characters & placed them into group one
\1\r      replaces group one with group one and a newline

Answer 4

I manually break up the long line at place. I think where the main point is by pressing "r" (normal mode) then press .

This will make delete a character where cursor is. So remember to do it at the space before the word you want to make a new line, else you will have to insert the missing character.

I just don't know how to break the line and shift it down 2 line space so that there will be space between the 2 lines.

Answer 5

As a quick and nasty, maybe try the following map:

map q 080lwbels<CR><ESC>

which says:

• start a 0th position of line,
• move to 80th char to the right,
• go to beginning of next word,
• go back to previous word,
• go to end of current word,
• go one char right, and
• substitute a CR for that char.

Then hitting q and CR will break the line up into chunks on the word boundary.

Answer 6

If you're on *nix you probably have fold available.

Select the region you want using v, then you can break on spaces at width 80 using:

!fold --spaces --width=80

This is esentially the same as using gq.

However, if you just want to break at character 80 and not be restricted to whitespaces you can use:

!fold --width=80

If you want it with one keystroke just set a mapping - I've used

vmap <f1> !fold --width=80<CR>