How can I make emacs highlight lines that go over 80 chars?

Question

I know there are solutions to making emacs show the 80 line column, but I don't want that sort of visual disturbance. I'd just like to make it highlight a line if it's over 80 characters.

Answer 1

Another easy option is to run highlight-lines-matching-regexp on the expression .{81}.

Every line with 81 characters or more will be highlighted with the color of your choice.