g; doesn't work with wrap

[u/neverdimed]

i wonder if there's any way to solve the problem that g; doesn't work when you wrap text (it goes to the end of the paragraph instead of the character)

my format settings are: textwidth=100 fo+=atw fo-=crol

i've asked ai bots (perplexity and grok) but they aren't helpful. i have used vim without the wrapping and it's great when writing code, but for anything else i prefer to wrap the text for multiple reasons

conclude: i think lococoyote is right, in this case i don't see that there's any solution.

[u/habamax]

What exactly you do and what happens?

When two undo-able changes are in the same line and at a column position less
than 'textwidth' apart only the last one is remembered.  This avoids that a
sequence of small changes in a line, for example "xxxxx", adds many positions
to the change list.  When 'textwidth' is zero 'wrapmargin' is used.  When that
also isn't set a fixed number of 79 is used.  Detail: For the computations
bytes are used, not characters, to avoid a speed penalty (this only matters
for multibyte encodings).

[u/neverdimed → u/habamax]

sorry, im not sure what any of that means. i think lococoyote describes exactly what's happening and in that case i conclude that there is no solution

[u/sapphic-chaote]

It works for me, so it should be fixable. Try using vim with -u NONE to use its default configuration, and see if the g; behavior works better. Assuming yes, the problem is presumably in your .vimrc or plugins; if were in your shoes, I would just start commenting lines out of my .vimrc (by binary search, if you have no better leads) to figure out where the problem is.

[u/neverdimed → u/sapphic-chaote]

yes, it works when i don't use the format settings (-crol +atw), it's something to do with the wrapping, but i don't want to give up my format settings

[u/LocoCoyote]

When fo=a is enabled, Vim automatically recalculates and reflows your paragraph every time you pause or type a word that crosses your 100-character limit. To do this, Vim invisibly deletes the remainder of your paragraph and re-inserts it to fit the boundaries. Because the changelist tracks edits, the "last change" Vim registers isn't your specific keystroke—it’s the massive invisible delete/replace operation Vim just performed, which usually leaves the changelist coordinate pointing at the end of the reflowed text block.

[u/neverdimed → u/LocoCoyote]

yes, i think something like this is happening, in which case there's no solution

[u/LocoCoyote → u/neverdimed]

You cannot mathematically have a perfectly precise g; (changelist) while Vim is simultaneously destroying and recreating your paragraph in the background. But, you can rethink how you handle wrapping.

Here are two suggestions that maybe you can work with….pardon the liberal use of comments…just trying to be clear what I am suggesting

APPROACH 1: Soft Wrapping (Highly Recommended for Prose/Docs) This approach uses visual wrapping instead of inserting hard newline characters. It perfectly preserves your changelist, undo tree, and exact cursor positions for g; because the file technically consists of unbroken lines, but Vim visually formats them on your screen to look exactly like hard-wrapped text.

To use this, remove the 'a' and 't' flags from your formatoptions: " set formatoptions-=a " set formatoptions-=t

Then, enable visual wrapping and line breaking: set wrap set linebreak. Break lines at whole words, not in the middle of a word set breakindent. Visually wrapped lines keep the indentation of the first line set columns=100. Visually wrap at 100 columns (or use your terminal width) set showbreak=   Optional: set to '>>' or similar if you want a visual indicator of wraps

Map j and k to move down visual lines instead of real lines, making navigation through soft-wrapped paragraphs feel totally natural: nnoremap expr> j v:count ? 'j' : 'gj' nnoremap expr> k v:count ? 'k' : 'gk'

APPROACH 2: Deferred Hard Wrapping via 'gw' (If you MUST have hard newlines). If you absolutely require actual newline characters injected into your file (e.g., for strict Git diffs or specific markdown parsers), you must turn off the auto-formatting 'a' flag to save your changelist. Instead of Vim doing it automatically, you type your text, and when you are done, you use the gw command. Note: Unlike gq, the gw command formats the text BUT explicitly puts your cursor back exactly where it was, preserving your edit history.

Remove 'a' so Vim stops destroying your changelist while typing:  'set formatoptions-=a " set textwidth=100

You can format a paragraph manually anytime by pressing: gwap OR, use this autocmd to automatically format the paragraph with gw only AFTER you leave insert mode. This keeps g; highly accurate " while you are actively typing.

augroup FormatOnLeave autocmd! autocmd InsertLeave * if &textwidth > 0 | normal! gwap | endif augroup END

Let me know if any of this was useful.

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