Enabling syntax highlighting in vim

I don’t use vim very often, but when I do it would be handy to have some syntax highlighting. Over on Google+, Vincent Knight shared a link to a post on Geekology that describes how to turn on syntax highlighting and autoindenting for vim on a Mac. Here is a summary.

Open the Terminal and type the following commands.

cd /usr/share/vim
sudo vim vimrc

Press the i key and then paste the following lines of code just below the set backspace=2 line:

set ai                  " auto indenting
set history=100         " keep 100 lines of history
set ruler               " show the cursor position
syntax on               " syntax highlighting
set hlsearch            " highlight the last searched term
filetype plugin on      " use the file type plugins

" When editing a file, always jump to the last cursor position
autocmd BufReadPost *
\ if ! exists("g:leave_my_cursor_position_alone") |
\ if line("'"") > 0 && line ("'"") <= line("$") |
\ exe "normal g'"" |
\ endif |
\ endif

Lastly, type Esc followed by :x. That’s it!