Some .vimrc settings
2012-Jun-03, Sunday 11:34 amYou know that feeling when you get into a new machine and vim is just configured wrong? Here's a couple of the configuration options I find most useful. Simply in your
This bunch basically swaps tab with a specified number of spaces, here 3. This is mostly useful if you're going to playing with shared code. Indentation can vary between people and platforms, so boiling it down to 3 or 4 spaces will be most portable. But instead of having to press space 3 or 4 times this lets you just press tab once, and vim will make the necessary changes.
This again is helpful when coding. Means that when you press Return onto a new line you will be at the same indentation level as the line above, like most IDEs. But, word of warning, if you're copy-pasting multiple lines this will go terribly wrong.
All those temp files that automatically get created when you're editing a file never seem to get deleted. And the clutter annoys me. This tells vim where to put the backups. First, if I've created a folder called
This now, I find really helpful. It turns on syntax highlighting. And search highlighting. It gives you colours. Love it.
$HOME
folder edit (or create if it doesn't exist) .vimrc
.set tabstop=3
set shiftwidth=3
set expandtab
This bunch basically swaps tab with a specified number of spaces, here 3. This is mostly useful if you're going to playing with shared code. Indentation can vary between people and platforms, so boiling it down to 3 or 4 spaces will be most portable. But instead of having to press space 3 or 4 times this lets you just press tab once, and vim will make the necessary changes.
set autoindent
This again is helpful when coding. Means that when you press Return onto a new line you will be at the same indentation level as the line above, like most IDEs. But, word of warning, if you're copy-pasting multiple lines this will go terribly wrong.
set backupdir=./.backup,.,/tmp
All those temp files that automatically get created when you're editing a file never seem to get deleted. And the clutter annoys me. This tells vim where to put the backups. First, if I've created a folder called
.backup
in the current folder use that. If not, use the current path (normal behaviour). Finally, throw them in /tmp
; I don't like this option because it means having to keep the names of all the files I edit in vim unique across the machine.if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
syntax on
set hlsearch
endif
This now, I find really helpful. It turns on syntax highlighting. And search highlighting. It gives you colours. Love it.