How to highlight Bash scripts in Vim?

Solution 1:

Are you correctly giving the shell script a .sh extension? Vim's automatic syntax selection is almost completely based on file name (extension) detection. If a file doesn't have a syntax set (or is the wrong syntax), Vim won't automatically change to the correct syntax just because you started typing a script in a given language.

As a temporary workaround, the command :set syn=sh will turn on shell-script syntax highlighting.

Solution 2:

The answers so far are correct that you can use the extension (like .sh) or a shebang line (like #!/bin/bash) to identify the file type. If you don't have one of those, you can still specify the file type manually by using a modeline comment at the top or bottom of your file.

For instance, if you want to identify a script without an extension as a shell script, you could add this comment to the top of your file:

# vim: set filetype=sh :

or

# vim: filetype=sh

That will tell vim to treat the file as a shell script. (You can set other things in the modeline, too. In vim type :help modeline for more info.)

Solution 3:

Actually syntax highlighting is a feature of vim not vi. Try using vim command and then do

:syntax on.

Solution 4:

I came to this answer looking for specifically how to highlight bash syntax, not POSIX shell. Simply doing a set ft=sh (or equivalent) will result in the file being highlighted for POSIX shell, which leaves a lot of syntax that's valid in bash highlighted in red. To get bash highlighting:

" Set a variable on the buffer that tells the sh syntax highlighter
" that this is bash:
let b:is_bash = 1
" Set the filetype to sh
set ft=sh

Note that if your ft is already sh, you still need the set command; otherwise the let doesn't take effect immediately.

You can make this a global default by making the variable global, i.e., let g:is_bash = 1.

:help ft-sh-syntax is the manual page I had to find; it explains this, and how to trigger highlighting of other flavors of shell.