If you like programming in the console, it'll be handy to have syntax highlighting in your favorite editor. Vi and Nano are the most used editors, so i'll show how to turn on syntax highlighting for these editors.


Vi

Edit the vimrc file, it's in the home dir:

vi /home/user/.vimrc

Edit the syntax line to what it says below, or add this line to the file if it doesn't exist:

:syntax enable

Syntax highlighting is now turned on for the languages Vi supports highlighting with.


Nano

The process of turning on syntax highlighting on Nano is a bit different, the integration of syntax highlighting in the editor is not that great, certainly not equal to that of an editor like Vi.

Edit the nanorc file, it's in /etc:

nano /etc/nanorc

Go to the syntax section in the file (you can search for "syntax", though in my nanorc file the section is at line 215). You'll see something like the following:

## C/C++

# include "/usr/share/nano/c.nanorc"


## HTML

# include "/usr/share/nano/html.nanorc"


## Perl

# include "/usr/share/nano/perl.nanorc"


## Python

# include "/usr/share/nano/python.nanorc"


## Ruby

# include "/usr/share/nano/ruby.nanorc"


## Java

# include "/usr/share/nano/java.nanorc"


## Assembler

# include "/usr/share/nano/asm.nanorc"


## Bourne shell scripts

# include "/usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc"

You can simply uncomment the file includes for the languages you want syntax highlighting enabled on.

The number of languages Nano offers syntax highlighting for is limited. If you think Vi is too complicated, and Nano doesn't support the language(s) you program in, you can always use Joe, it has by default regex files for syntax highlighting, and for more languages than Nano.