vim Comment Newlines Unexpected Behavior

Question

In using vim, when I start a comment with //, immediately after I type a space, it begins a new comment line.

For instance, if I typed the following:

//hello world my name is stefan

I would get:

//hello
//world
//my
//name
//is
//stefan

This behavior has manifested itself in python code as well, where if I begin a line with print, each space is interpreted as a newline

print "Hello world my name is Stefan"

Is

print
"hello
world
my
name
is
stefan"

Is this the intended behavior or do I have a setting messed up? The following is my .vimrc:

" An example for a vimrc file.
"
" Maintainer:   Bram Moolenaar <email address>
" Last change:  2006 Nov 16
"
" To use it, copy it to
"     for Unix and OS/2:  ~/.vimrc
"         for Amiga:  s:.vimrc
"  for MS-DOS and Win32:  $VIM\_vimrc
"       for OpenVMS:  sys$login:.vimrc

" When started as "evim", evim.vim will already have done these settings.
if v:progname =~? "evim"
  finish
endif

" TagList plugin settings
nmap <f12> :TlistToggle<end>

" Use Vim settings, rather then Vi settings (much better!).
" This must be first, because it changes other options as a side effect.
set nocompatible

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set nobackup     " do not keep a backup file, use versions instead
set history=50   " keep 50 lines of command line history
set ruler    " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd  " display incomplete commands
set incsearch    " do incremental searching

" For Win32 GUI: remove 't' flag from 'guioptions': no tearoff menu entries
" let &guioptions = substitute(&guioptions, "t", "", "g")

" Don't use Ex mode, use Q for formatting
map Q gq

" In many terminal emulators the mouse works just fine, thus enable it.
" set mouse=a

" Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors
" Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.
if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
  syntax on
  set hlsearch
endif

" Only do this part when compiled with support for autocommands.
if has("autocmd")

  " Enable file type detection.
  " Use the default filetype settings, so that mail gets 'tw' set to 72,
  " 'cindent' is on in C files, etc.
  " Also load indent files, to automatically do language-dependent indenting.
  filetype plugin indent on

  " Put these in an autocmd group, so that we can delete them easily.
  augroup vimrcEx
  au!

  " For all text files set 'textwidth' to 78 characters.
  autocmd FileType text setlocal textwidth=78

  " When editing a file, always jump to the last known cursor position.
  " Don't do it when the position is invalid or when inside an event handler
  " (happens when dropping a file on gvim).
  autocmd BufReadPost *
    \ if line("'\"") > 0 && line("'\"") <= line("$") |
    \   exe "normal! g`\"" |
    \ endif

  augroup END

else

  set autoindent     " always set autoindenting on

endif " has("autocmd")

set   backupdir=./.backup,.,/tmp
set   directory=.,./.backup,/tmp

map <F1> :NERDTree <CR>
map <F2> :q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>:q!<CR>
map <F5> :AV<CR>
map <F6> :AS<CR>
map <F7> :IHV<CR>
map <F8> :IHS<CR>

Answer 1

My guess is that you mixed up "tw" (aka textwidth) and the old vi command to set the text margin "wm". "tw" sets the actual width of the page (ie. tw=77 means you want 77 letters per line) but "wm" set the how far from the edge of the screen to wrap, so on an 80 column screen "wm=3" would have the same effect as "tw=77". So if your tw is set to something very small, it would try to wrap after every word.

Answer 2

I can't spot it in your vimrc, but it appears your tw is set to something low (other than 0), like 5 or so. Try setting tw=0, and see what happens.

EDIT:
As Paul pointed out you might have mixed up tw (textwidth) and ts (tabstop) which is commonly set to 4 or 2.