The five values that define cursor position in vim

We generally think of a cursor having two coordinates, x and y, row and column, but when I call getcurpos() I get a list with 5 values in it.

:help getcurpos()
:echo getcurpos()
[0, 4124, 8, 0, 57]

Here are the definitions of those numbers:

bufnum - the number of the buffer when calling getpos("'A") to get the position with a mark. Always 0 with getcurpos()

lnum - The line number

col - The number of chars used to go this far to the right. <Tab><Tab> is 2. 10 spaces is 10.

off - Is the number of chars past the end of the line. 0 unless using virtualedit.

curswant - Is the column you started on when starting to navigate with j and k. You might start on col 20, and go down to a line with only 10 columns in which case the cursor would be on col 10, but curswant would still 20. The next navigation to a line with more than 20 characters would put you back on col 20.

With virtualedit turned on curswant will always be the column position of the cursor.