Vi and Vim Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people using the vi and Vim families of text editors. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I want to see the current statusline definition/string as loaded by Vim. So, taking into account :help statusline, if it is the default, the output would be empty, but if ruler is set (and nothing more) the output would be:
%<%f\ %h%m%r%=%-14.(%l,%c%V%)\ %P
I have tried :echo statusline but I get there is no such variable and I have tried :echo $statusline, but it does not appear any output.
:help 'rulerformat' and :help 'statusline' are both clear about this: their default value is empty. If the user doesn't set them explicitly (or implicitly, via some plugin), then some internal routine is used, which is not exposed to the user in any way and is unlikely to even look like statusline or rulerformat.
More generally, you can print the value of an option in the command-line with :help :set:
:set optionname?
or with :help :echo:
:echo &optionname
Note that these commands may have slightly different output.
In this case, both commands would do:
:set statusline?
:echo &statusline
You can also prepend :help :verbose to :set, which will tell you where the option was last set:
:verbose set statusline?
:set option?or:echo &optionto see the value ofoption.optionby the actualoption-name, e.g. in your case::echo &statuslineoptionwith the name of the option you're interested in. Try:set statusline?. You should at least seestatusline=(and nothing more) ifstatuslineis not set.statusline=with:set statusline?, however I haveset rulerin my.vimrcand therefore I have a statusline.