Take the 2-minute tour ×  On this page, I've found this pattern
that helps in identifying lines longer than 80 characters by
highlighting the characters after column 80.  I fail to
understand its bit by bit explanation. Could you help me?
share|improve this question Oh, you could also use this to match
lines with at least 81 characters: /.\{81\}.*. I find this easy
to remember. –  steffen Nov 1 '12 at 13:20 @steffen: Not
exactly. A character does not necessarily occupy a single
display cell (think <Tab> or Asian characters). The virtual
column \%v matches cell width, your . atom characters. –  Ingo
Karkat Nov 1 '12 at 13:26 add comment  2 Answers  up vote 2 down
vote accepted  This is quite simple, actually.    • \%>80v
starts the match after the virtual column number 80, see :help
%>.    • .\+ matches 1 or more of any character, see :help /.
and :help \+.  share|improve this answer that was a nice
explanation. does virtual column mean tab counts as single
character instead of 8 cells as seen on page ? – 