Question

i have a – probably – simple problem with gVim under Ubuntu. I can’t use folding in my files. I’m using all the folding releated commands like zi, zm, zr, etc. but none of it seems to work. I’m not even getting any errors after using them.

Is there any option i should turn on before i can start using folding (if that’s important – folding is also not working under regular, non graphical Vim) ? My gVim version is 7.2.330

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

If you use manual folding, you have to create the folds before you can use them.

Select an area you want to fold in visual mode and then type zf to create the fold. Consulting :help fold-commands gives you more info on that.

The disadvantage of manual is, that your created folds are lost after you close the file. To have persistent folds, try setting the foldmethod to syntax which creates folds based on the filetype (you’ll have to do a :syntax enable before, maybe in your .vimrc).

I often end up setting foldmethod to marker and create the markers by myself.

If you want to keep your global setting of fdm=manual, you could specify a modeline in those files that use different settings.