Getting vi/vim syntax highlighting used by certain user

Question

At work most web-development we do, is done in vi/vim, on a debian-server.

Sometimes we have to alter some files as root, and the syntax-highlighting-model of that user (root) is absolutely awesome. My problem is that the guy that set the syntax has gone, and I have absolutely no idea where the highlighting is defined.

So, if I wanted to know what kind of syntax is used by a particular user (in vi/vim), where should I look, or what command should I type to get those pretty (and eye-friendly!) colours whenever I use my personal user to edit stuff?

Answer 1

You should look in the same place you would have configured your vim environment if you were that user, the .vimrc file, .gvimrc file, and .vim directory in that users home directory. For the root account, on a linux host that's likely to be /root/.

Make sure you're authorized to go poking around in there before you do so.

Answer 2

One year and half I had to struggle with a "black box" made by someone who left the company. I felt a little bad about it because it was too obvious that what it did and how it did it was a large bit over my head. After too much hair-pulling I decided to hit the Human Resources for the guy's phone number.

I called him 5 minutes after.

Problem solved.

But Dyslexic Tangent's advice seems the most reasonable to me.

Also you can type :echo g:colors_nameto get the name of the colorscheme in use. Maybe you can find it on vim.org.