On vi how to enable a font colors while editing a shell script or a c/c++ program. I am using vim 7.1.266 on opensuse 11.0.
In ~/.vimrc put
syntax enable
or from inside Vim do
:syn on
I cannot find .vimrc in my home directory on suse. There is another file called .viminfo but it just gives the information on vim.
:syn on
It did not work for me when I tested it on vi while a shell script is open.
Thanks
I don’t know if you’re using vi in compatible mode, or if that even has syntax highlighting. Try creating a ~/.vimrc with the following two lines:
set nocompatible
syntax enable
reopen vi (or vim) and see what happens.
The default install of openSUSE does not come with vim-data installed. vim-data contains all the important plugins for filetype detection as well as syntax files. Install it from the repo.
In case its already installed, see the output of the command
:set filetype
If the output is just a
filetype =
, then your filetype detection is off. In this case, I would suggest you see the following vim documentation:
Vim documentation: syntax
In my case, I had no vim-data installed, which was creating all the issues.
I think it’s actually syntax on.
At any rate, I think by default it’s commented out. Look for syntax on in /etc/vimrc. If the line begins with a ‘"’ remove it to uncomment it.
:syn on and :syntax enable are one and the same thing.
Installing “vim-data” did the trick for me, thanks 
Edited now