Highlighting the current line number in vim

Question

Is there a way to highlight only the current line number (in the left hand coloumn) in vim, without highlighting the background of the current line? Ideally, I

Answer 1

You can set cursorline to highlight only the numbers

'cursorlineopt' 'culopt' string (default: "number,line")                        
                        local to window                                         
                        {not available when compiled without the +syntax        
                        feature}                                                
        Comma separated list of settings for how 'cursorline' is displayed.     
        Valid values:                                                           
        "line"          Highlight the text line of the cursor with              
                        CursorLine hl-CursorLine.                               
        "screenline"    Highlight only the screen line of the cursor with       
                        CursorLine hl-CursorLine.                               
        "number"        Highlight the line number of the cursor with            
                        CursorLineNr hl-CursorLineNr.             

And to override your colorscheme use autocmd

So, the following works:

set cursorline
set cursorlineopt=number
autocmd ColorScheme * highlight CursorLineNr cterm=bold term=bold gui=bold

Answer 2

This is what worked for me:

highlight CursorLine cterm=NONE ctermbg=NONE ctermfg=NONE guibg=NONE guifg=NONE
set cursorline

I'm just using this in my .vimrc after having set the color scheme. Of course you could also set a specific background color but setting all of them to NONE just highlights the line number (i.e. makes it brighter).

I guess you could just use :hi CursorLine cterm=NONE but I just wanted to make sure I'm making everything transparent (gvim included).

With CursorLineNR I was then able to set the foreground and background colors of the highlighted number.

I'm only writing this because for me it worked without any autocommands and it may be what most people require.

Answer 3

You want to look at

:se cursorline

and perhaps even/also

:se cursorcolumn

Answer 4

This worked for me to highlight the line number and not the rest of the line:

highlight CursorLineNr cterm=NONE ctermbg=15 ctermfg=8 gui=NONE guibg=#ffffff guifg=#d70000

Answer 5

There are two groups that determine highlighting of line displayed when &cursorline option is active: CursorLine and CursorLineNR. First is used to highlight the whole line, second for the line number. So to achieve what you want you must

1. Clear the highlighting of CursorLine: just hi clear CursorLine after any :colorscheme and set background= call.

   hi clear CursorLine
   augroup CLClear
       autocmd! ColorScheme * hi clear CursorLine
   augroup END
   

2. Set the highlighting of CursorLineNR if it is not set in your colorscheme:

   hi CursorLineNR cterm=bold
   augroup CLNRSet
       autocmd! ColorScheme * hi CursorLineNR cterm=bold
   augroup END
   

   (better to check whether it is already set in the colorscheme, maybe it will look better in that case).

You can join both autocommands in one of course.

CursorLineNR has been added relatively recently around version 7.3.488.

Answer 6

The help for highlight-groups does not mention an exclusive "number of current line" syntax group, so the official answer might be no.

You may want to take a look in the cursorline option which highlights the entire line, if it helps.