Is it possible to display indentation guides in Vim?

Question

I'm a longtime Vim user (3 or 4 years) who has recently started dealing with some deeply nested code. This code is indented with spaces, not tabs. I would like some clean and non-distracting indication of indentation to help with keeping track of which block of code I'm in when I'm looking at something many levels deep.

:set list  

only displays tab and endline characters. I have found one plugin (can't seem to dig it up at the moment) that will highlight each indentation level in progressively darker colors but this is visually unappealing. Ideally I would like to see thin vertical lines at each indentation level. Many new-fangled editors have this functionality but I'm not willing to give up on Vim just yet.

Does anyone know how this can be achieved?

Answer 1

This answer is a bit late to the party and also a shameless plug. :)

Regardless, try my Indent-Guides.vim plugin. It was created to scratch my own itch regarding the lack of indent guides in vim. I got fed-up waiting for someone else to come along and build it, so I just did it myself.

Features:

• Can detect both tab and space indent styles.
• Automatically inspects your colorscheme and picks appropriate colors (gVim only).
• Will highlight indent levels with alternating colors.
• Full support for gVim and basic support for Terminal Vim.
• Seems to work on Windows gVim 7.3 (haven't done any extensive tests though).
• Customizable size for indent guides, eg. skinny guides (soft-tabs only).
• Customizable start indent level.

Here’s a few screenshots of the plugin in action: put your mouse here and click.