This feature makes actually sense if one uses vim for more than basic editing. I am using vim for programming and have therefore line-numbers and color coding enabled always (set number, syntax on). When using the xterm for selecting text, line numbers are also selected which is very annoying.

Thanks for the hint on how i can set vim into visual mode by selecting with the mouse. in visual mode, the selection doesn't include the line numbers.

This combination makes actually sense:

set number
set mouse=a

Cheers,
-S

It's very wonderful.
I don't see this answer in vim docs. Thanks again!

Thanks! I have no idea why anybody would want a mouse in vim. That's a stupid feature. If you're using the mouse, you probably want to copy something OUT of the terminal, like text into a browser.
Anyway, thanks.

I wonder what happened to my putty software. I normally use the mouse right click to copy text into vi within putty. I stopped working oneday when there was a system update.

Now things back to normal. Visual mode is a bit confusing and I never used it anyway.

Thank you very much! This was really annoying.
I assumed that this is a case of gnome-terminal.
So it took a while till I found your blog.
Best regards
R. Henze

If you're seeing this effect in Putty, that means your sysadmin put it into the global vimrc file. If you build vim from source on your own machine, which doesn't already have a global vimrc file, you shouldn't this effect when you login to SSH using putty.

There's no need to disable this feature. Just hold shift while selecting text.

hi,
thank you for this information,
this fix my problems and i can now working
with (g)vi(m).

It happened when I tried to write a code to add an action and enabled my module for the 1st time

I cannot see any connection between this and my code I actually just contained empty functions and hooks

This is not the 1st time I got this, last time I recovered from my nightly backup and lost the accesslog, watchdog and some cache I am not backing up nightly

I think this is a critical issue, I'll do my best to investigate it anyway your tip saved me! 10x!

Florida Permit Test

I hardly came across something more annoying as "visual" edit mode in VIM. I'm using putty a lot and the left mouse button is to paste text, not to enter "visual" mode, thank you very much.

If I want a "visual" editor vi, or vim, is the last thing I think about.

adding set mouse-=a to a file called ~/vimrc didn't change a thing. vim insisted on "visual" mode.

Please give me back vi

THAT drives me insane!!! I hate to say this but that one that decided to do this as default setting should ___ right NOW!!!!

Thanks A LOT for this hint!

EDIT: removed offensive words

Thankyou thankyou ...the mouse feature was annoying me .... now i am happy

thank you, thank you thank you ;)

this was annoying the crap out of me...

I had resorted to head|tail file everytime I had to copy it over because of this annoying auto visual feature. Thanks for this setting and note!

hey, thanks for that. I wonder what they were thinking.

This has been killing me too. Now if I can only find an app that will let me cat files to the clipboard. BTW it looks like you're using Drupal for you website. Drupal rocks!

I'm glad i wasn't the only one going nuts.. thanks!

Was driving me crazy, I knew something was up with my .vimrc because renaming it would restore the old behaviour, but jeez...

This was a horribad feature, leave my mouse alone >.<

it fixs haha

Now that I control my mouse, i can work again.

Aaargh. Another source of frustration conquered. Thank you. My wheel continues to work, too. Yay!

yes, that visual mouse was highly irritating. thanks for the post.

good point with old dogs :)

thanks, tip was really helpful.
i was trying to copy the name of function from the vim editor into gbd window. Was unsuccessful till now :)

It was driving me crazy too, I thought at first that there was sth wrong with my laptop.

Looks like vim people can't teach old dogs new tricks:)

cheers

I too had this problem. However, one thing I now miss about vim is that the mouse wheel no longer works. It seems as if setting mouse=a instead of mouse-=a, while producing the annoying auto-visual mode behavior, also enables the mouse wheel. Ah well, the trade-offs are worth it.

thank you for posting this fix. This problem has been driving me nuts