Highlight the current line in Vim

To highlight the current line in Vim, you have to set the cursorline setting.

:set cursorline
:set cul

These two are the same. This can also be set in your _vimrc file, you don’t need the colon then.

Here’s an extract from my vimrc file:

set cursorline
set nowrap
set ic                       " Ignore case
set ai                       " autoindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
set cul                      " Cursor highlight

map <f1> ^hhxxj0
map <f2> ^i  <esc>j0

The last 2 entries add mappings for F1 and F2, to dedent and indent the current line. Map is one of the most useful Vim commands, well worth learning.