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How can I change the syntax highlighting in vim for C/C++/PHP in particular? Can I also change the background color so it won't be the same as the shell's?

Cœur
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Sebi
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  • Btw in vim (not gvim) you are limited only to colors that your terminal supports! It's not many of them. – lzap Aug 22 '12 at 11:38

2 Answers2

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Before you start installing various plugins, check out pre-installed color schemes that ships with your Vim. In my case I have many of them:

# rpm -ql vim vim-common | grep color
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/README.txt
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/blue.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/darkblue.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/default.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/delek.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/desert.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/elflord.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/evening.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/koehler.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/morning.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/murphy.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/pablo.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/peachpuff.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/ron.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/shine.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/slate.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/torte.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/zellner.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/ftplugin/dircolors.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/colortest.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/dircolors.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/syncolor.vim
/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/after/colors
/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/colors

To change it just use this:

colorscheme darkblue

Also you can download color schemes and just drop them into your VIMRC subdirectory "colors" and load them the same way. I like this one for example: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

And of course, you can modify those color schemes. Just copy the "default.vim" (or the one you like) to your VIMRC/colors and edit it to change colors you want.

lzap
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  • I have these schemes also; I've managed to change the colorscheme but the syntax highlighting has not changed. – Sebi Aug 21 '12 at 11:30
  • What you mean by "syntax highlighting has not changed"? All syntax definitions defines constants, not colors. All colors are defined in these files. So change it here if you want to tune it. – lzap Aug 22 '12 at 11:37
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You have to give it a syntax file to load and play around with it:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1571

To enable it (in case you don't know) its :set syntax

For info on changing vim's background check here:

Setting the VIM background colors

Community
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ddoor
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