Vim sign column toggle

Question

When signs are defined in Vim, a column appears at the left of the screen.

From the Vim help:

When signs are defined for a file, Vim will automatically add a column of two
characters to display them in. When the last sign is unplaced the column
disappears again.

Is it possible to remove the column whilst there are still signs defined?

Ideally I would like to toggle the column on / off.

Answer 1

If you are using Vim 8.0 or newer (or NeoVim), this is now a simple setting:

$ vim "+help signcolumn" "+only"

For instance,

:set scl=no   " force the signcolumn to disappear
:set scl=yes  " force the signcolumn to appear
:set scl=auto " return the signcolumn to the default behaviour