43

I just installed the 64-bit zipped version for Windows of gvim on my new machine at work, and I changed some settings to make it compatible with Visual Studio 2010.

Now the backspace key doesn't work for some reason.

Here's my .vimrc file:

set nowrap
set ruler
set encoding=utf-8
set fileencoding=utf-8
set ff=dos

It's only a minor annoyance (the delete key works), but I was just wondering if anybody knew.

4
  • Wild guess, have you earlier had source mswin.vim in your vimrc and now it's missing?
    – johnny
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 14:03
  • @Johnny I do have that file (mswin.vim) in my C:\Program Files\vim72
    – leeand00
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 14:36
  • I'm no vim expert but I have noticed that backspace works in a different way if source mswin.vim is missing from the vimrc file. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V also will not copy/paste
    – johnny
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 18:14
  • 1
    If you need to check it, I found this link helps: vim.wikia.com/wiki/Open_vimrc_file
    – johnny
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 18:18

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
79

Does it entirely not work, or does it just not backspace past where you went into insert mode? There's an option backspace which controls this:

Influences the working of <BS>, <Del>, CTRL-W and CTRL-U in Insert
mode.  This is a list of items, separated by commas.  Each item allows
a way to backspace over something:
value       effect
indent      allow backspacing over autoindent
eol         allow backspacing over line breaks (join lines)
start       allow backspacing over the start of insert; CTRL-W and CTRL-U
            stop once at the start of insert.

owen_water's suggestion is the same as Carpetsmoker's comment, enabling all three of these. That's generally what people want, since it's a bit surprising to have Vim refuse to let you backspace text that's right there. So take your pick of the two equivalent choices - I'd go with the more verbose and clear one:

set backspace=2
set backspace=indent,eol,start

In some cases, bad terminals can mess with backspace and delete, but I doubt that's your problem in Windows. There is some ability to fix this; see :help fixdel.

4
  • In Cygwin on Windows7, I used the following .vimrc to fix the backspace issue. set nocompatible syntax on set nu set ts=2 set autoindent set bs=2 set bs=indent,eol,start fixdel
    – Jerry Tian
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 9:15
  • 2
    @Jerry: nocompatible is set (rather, compatible is off) by default if you have a vimrc, syntax highlighting, line numbering, tabstops, and indentation are irrelevant, so your solution is exactly what I posted, plus some redundancy - backspace=2 and backspace=indent,eol,start are completely equivalent.
    – Cascabel
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 19:22
  • 1
    You are right, @Jefromi I just copy my whole .vimrc to confirm that your answer also works in Cygwin too. Should only focus on the relevant part to make the answer clear.
    – Jerry Tian
    Commented Aug 2, 2011 at 8:10
  • Using Windows 8.1 with the grapic version of Vim 7.4 the set backspace=indent,eol,start command allowed me to use backspace just like I do in Linux, thanks!
    – Charlie Vieillard
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 9:48
13

never use vim in Windows, but I have meet the same problem before in open solaris.
Just try:

set backspace=2
1
  • 8
    I have: set backspace=indent,eol,start in my ~/.vimrc
    – Martin Tournoij
    Commented Mar 25, 2011 at 1:16

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