Pimping My vim

28 June 2015

vim is a versatile and powerful text editor for command-line environments. In *nix world, it would be very difficult to survive if you cannot edit files/configs without using vi. It was first dubbed as Vi iMitation but was later relabeled Vi IMproved. It is free and open source software and is released under a license that includes some charityware clauses. To pimp your vim, you will need to create a file called .vimrc under your home folder.

Creating ~/.vimrc

set nocompatible
syntax on
set mouse=a
set showmatch
set autoindent
set smartindent
set backspace=2
set tabstop=4
set number
set smarttab
set shiftwidth=4
colorscheme torte

set nocompatible fixes the issue where arrow keys do not function properly on some systems

syntax on enables syntax highlighting for programming languages

set mouse=a allows you to click around the text editor with your mouse to move the cursor

set showmatch highlights matching brackets in programming languages

set autoindent if indented, new lines will also be indented

set smartindent automatically indents lines after opening a bracket in programming languages

set backspace=2 makes the backspace key function like it should

set tabstop=4 how much space Vim gives to a tab

set number enables line numbering

set smarttab improves tabbing

set shiftwidth=4 assists code formatting

colorscheme torte changes the color scheme to your liking. Look in /usr/share/vim/vim73/colors for options. Folder location varies according to your version of vim.