Adding code highlighting to VIM in Snow Leopard

Open a Terminal and and enter these commands to open vim’s configuration file:


cd /usr/share/vim
sudo vim vimrc


Press the ‘i‘ key to switch vim to Insertion Mode, then enter these lines 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


Press the Escape key to take vim out of Insertion Mode, then press ‘:‘ (colon) followed by ‘x‘ to save the file and exit. Enter this command again:


sudo vim vimrc


… and you’ll see that vim now automatically indents code, displays the cursor position, has syntax highlighting, etc.

Information taken from here.