Word Wrap in Vim (preserving indentation)

Question

I was just looking at this post which describes how to wrap entire words in vim. The accepted solution was this:

:set formatoptions=l :set lbr 

Which takes this text (tabs are shown as \t):

 *Inside of window                        *Outside of window |---------------------------------------|     |\t\tthis is a like of text that will wr|ap here                             |\t\tcan you see the wrap               | |                                       | |---------------------------------------| 

This accomplishes a behavior like this (tabs are shown as \t):

 *Inside of window                        *Outside of window |---------------------------------------|     |\t\tthis is a like of text that will   | |wrap here                              | |\t\tcan you see the wrap               | |                                       | |---------------------------------------| 

I would however like to redefine this function. I would like the wrapped line to have the same number of tabs in front of it that the line above has plus one. Ie:

 *Inside of window                        *Outside of window |---------------------------------------|     |\t\tthis is a like of text that will   | |\t\t\twrap here                        | |\t\tcan you see the wrap               | |                                       | |---------------------------------------| 

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This did not work when the question was originally asked, but as of June 25, 2014, this will work. (Assuming you update your vim to a version newer than that date)

Add to your .vimrc:

" Indents word-wrapped lines as much as the 'parent' line set breakindent " Ensures word-wrap does not split words set formatoptions=l set lbr 

And that's it!

--

Some people (myself included) share a single .vimrc across multiple computers. In that case, it's important to have this line be robust (to avoid annoying error messages). This is a little better:

if has("patch-7.4.354")     " Indents word-wrapped lines as much as the 'parent' line     set breakindent     " Ensures word-wrap does not split words     set formatoptions=l     set lbr endif 

This way, if you're on an earlier version of vim, you don't get an error message.

Answer 2

The breakindent patch has what you're looking for. I successfully applied it using instructions found in this thread:

Patch Vim with the breakindent patch on OS X with Homebrew

Specifically, echristopherson's Homebrew formula.

I know this thread is old but it's popular on google and I came across it multiple times when trying to find a solution.

EDIT: This patch is now included with vim as patch 7.4.338. See: https://retracile.net/blog/2014/07/18/18.00

On Yosemite (Mac OS X), I used snowbound's command with hombrew:

brew install macvim --with-features=huge --override-system-vim --HEAD