Syntax highlighting in vi

Question

I use vi in Linux to edit e.g. JSP files.

The code is not syntax highlighted. I think this should be possible to enable, but I haven't found out how. Is this possible to do in vi?

update1:

# vi --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.0 (2006 May 7, compiled Jul 2 2009 17:46:42)

update2:

i tried to open files with nano through Putty ssh according mnmnc answer but unfortunately result is not change. I'm not change html.nanorc file and it now have next text

syntax "html" "\.html$"
color blue start="<" end=">"
color red "&[^;[[:space:]]]*;"

Answer 1

Why not use nano?

If you actually got VI and not VIM, nano has pretty good syntax highlighting capabilities based on a simple regular expression. Configurable for multiple languages.

Look in the /bin/nano /usr/bin/nano if you have it installed. It should be in there. Almost every linux has it.

perform cat /etc/nanorc this is a configuration script for nano. You should have it. It contains lines similar to this one: include "/usr/share/nano/html.nanorc" and the file /usr/share/nano/html.nanorc contains specification syntax highlighting.

for example:

syntax "html" "\.html$"
color brightcyan start="<" end=">"
color brightred start="<script" end="</script>"
color red "&[^;[[:space:]]]*;"

also you can place .nanorc file in you profile directory to overwrite the global settings.

If it is still not working then I think the fault is on the XShell side. Switch to Putty and check again. In the Putty window you will have options on the left hand side. There will be Window->Colours option.

Make sure you have three first checkboxes ticked. It will work for sure. I think XShell made the output monochromatic for you.

Answer 2

vi on Linux is almost certainly actually vim. You can check this as follows

# vi --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.0 (2006 May 7, compiled Mar  5 2011 21:36:07)

vim does support colour syntax highlighting. However it only does so on terminals that support ANSI colour not on monochrome terminals. Check the value of your TERM variable.

# echo $TERM
xterm

Then check if that terminal type supports colours

# infocmp xterm | grep color
        colors#8, cols#80, it#8, lines#24, pairs#64,

In a vim session you can also change this setting

:set term=color_xterm
:set term=ansi

etc

Syntax highlighting only works for files that vim recognises as being a file for which it has a set of highlighting rules. If you read vim's help, you can find out how to add your own highlighting rules files

Answer 3

This is vi

This is vim

vim means improved version of vi

Answer 4

You may need to explicitly turn highlighting on. Try

:syntax on

and

:help syntax