Question

I know how to turn syntax highlighting on and off in vim by running this in the editor:

:syntax on/off

But I want syntax highlighting to be enabled by default, so I don’t have to turn it on every time I run vim.

How do I do this?

Answer 1

Edit your $HOME/.vimrc (Unix/Linux/OSX) or $HOME/_vimrc (Windows) to include the following line:

syntax on

EDIT

If your syntax highlighting doesn’t work when you start Vim, you probably don’t have a
$HOME/.vimrc or $HOME/_vimrc (known collectively as vimrc from now on). In that case, you have two options:

• Create an empty vimrc.
• Copy vimrc_example.vim as your vimrc (recommended, thanks @oyenamit). You can find vimrc_example.vim in the runtime directory.

The location of the runtime directory varies between operating systems:

• On my system (Arch Linux, and Mac, thanks @totophe), it’s in /usr/share/vim/vim73.
• On Windows, it’s in \Program Files\Vim\vim73.