Using Vim, how do I 'set statusline' to align right?

Question

My ~/.vimrc uses the following statusline setting

set statusline=%F%m%r%h%w\ %{&ff}\ %Y\ [0x\%02.2B]\ %l/%L,%v\ %p%%

Everything is left aligned. help 'statusline' says that the - character is used to "Left justify the item. The default is right justified when minwid is larger than the length of the item."

However, I haven't been able to use (or not use) - to ever align things to the right.

What is an example of having one group of items left aligned and one group right aligned?

I've also tried to use = but it just prints the = sign.

Answer 1

You need to prefix the = with a percent sign: %=.

Using your example:

set statusline=%F%m%r%h%w\ %{&ff}\ %Y\ [0x\%02.2B]\ %=l/%L,%v\ %p%%

Will right-align the "%l/%L,%v\ %p%%" group. You should also probably force a truncation using %< in a suitable place to accommodate narrow windows:

set statusline=%F%m%r%h%w%<\ %{&ff}\ %Y\ [0x\%02.2B]\ %=l/%L,%v\ %p%%

Answer 2

You must use %=

What is at the left of %= will be left aligned, and what is at the right of %= will be right aligned.

For example, here is the statusline I use.

set statusline=%f%m%r%h\ [%L]\ [%{&ff}]\ %y%=[%p%%]\ [line:%05l,col:%02v]