Hide (or fold) columns of text in (g)Vim (horizontally)

Question

Hi all, is there a way to hide columns of a buffer (text file, you know what I mean) while editing it in Vim? e.g. text visible in the buffer before hiding column 2&3:

abbcccccc
accdddddd

And after hiding them:

acccccc
adddddd

(Not to mention I'm working with really huge files (sometimes over 200 gb).)

And yeah, I had found foldcol.vim, but it requires a patch, and I don't have gcc to compile it as a user on a server.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Is foldcol.vim maybe what you need? No clue if it works on your huge files though. 200 gb! Impressive in a geeky kind of way. =)

Answer 2

Cannot be done in stock vim; there is a conceal patch that has not been accepted. The most recent version is only for vim7, and not 7.2 (much less 7.2+patches), so it's probably best considered dead.