Vim syntax folding with perl

Question

I use vim at work for developing pretty sizable perl code, and I got stuck while trying to learn how to use folds properly.

(Note: I'm still relatively new to Vim - switched over from gedit about half a year ago, but I'm still learning the new powerful things everyday!)

This is my portion of .vimrc related to folding

" mouse is on
set mouse=a
" folding
set foldmethod=syntax
set foldlevelstart=1
let perl_fold=1
let sh_fold_enabled=1
let perl_extended_vars=1
let perl_sync_dist=250

So this thing is good in that it folds all the code, and I can freely open / close folds with simply pressing z-a. But it's also bad in that everything is folded when I open a file.

Is there a way to have the file not be folded when I open the file, but still allow me to open/close blocks of code based on perl syntax with z-a? (or some other keystroke)

Answer 1

The "fold level" is the depth of the fold:

1
  2
    3

The line that you put in your ~/.vimrc,

set foldlevelstart=1

tells vim fo close every fold up to level 1 by default.

Set it to an impossibly high value to open all folds by default:

set foldlevelstart=999

Note that you can also try a low level like 2 or 3 which may have interesting results depending on your coding style.

See :h foldlevelstart.