Customizing your .vimrc file

If you are using Linux and haven’t familiarized yourself with the world of VIM yet…then you need to rethink your text editing habits. Alright, so that’s a little harsh, but did you know that with a few changes to your .vimrc file (stored in your home directory) you can mold VIM into a very powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE)?! Then if you stack on a few plugins like ‘Nerd Tree’ and ‘Exuberant C-Tags’ you have an development environment that rivals any paid application.

Here are a few of my favorites:

" First turn on the plugins for the tabs and syntax highlighting
" Enable loading filetype and indentation plugins
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on

" Turn syntax highlighting on
syntax on

" Use 2 spaces for (auto)indent
set shiftwidth=2

" Don't highlight results of a search
set nohlsearch

" When a bracket is inserted, briefly jump to a matching one
set showmatch

Here’s a full text copy of my .vimrc file. Keep in mind I have Exuberant C-Tags, Omni-Complete and Nerd Tree also in use so those are in my mappings.

"
" MAIN CUSTOMIZATION FILE
"

" Enable loading filetype and indentation plugins
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on

" Turn syntax highlighting on
syntax on

"
" GLOBAL SETTINGS
"
" Define Color scheme
color delek

" Write contents of the file, if it has been modified, on buffer exit
set autowrite

" Allow backspacing over everything
set backspace=indent,eol,start

" Insert mode completion options
set completeopt=menu,longest,preview

" Use UTF-8 as the default buffer encoding
set enc=utf-8

" Remember up to 100 'colon' commmands and search patterns
set history=100

" Enable incremental search
set incsearch

" Always show status line, even for one window
set laststatus=2

" Jump to matching bracket for 2/10th of a second (works with showmatch)
set matchtime=2

" Don't highlight results of a search
set nohlsearch

" Enable CTRL-A/CTRL-X to work on octal and hex numbers, as well as characters
set nrformats=octal,hex,alpha

" Use F10 to toggle 'paste' mode
set pastetoggle=<f10>

" Show line, column number, and relative position within a file in the status line
set ruler

" Scroll when cursor gets within 3 characters of top/bottom edge
set scrolloff=3

" Round indent to multiple of 'shiftwidth' for > and < commands
set shiftround

" Use 4 spaces for (auto)indent
set shiftwidth=2

" Show (partial) commands (or size of selection in Visual mode) in the status line
set showcmd

" When a bracket is inserted, briefly jump to a matching one
set showmatch

" Don't request terminal version string (for xterm)
set t_RV=

" Use 2 spaces for <tab> and :retab
set tabstop=2

" Write swap file to disk after every 50 characters
set updatecount=50

" Remember things between sessions
"
" '20  - remember marks for 20 previous files
" "50 - save 50 lines for each register
" :20  - remember 20 items in command-line history
" %    - remember the buffer list (if vim started without a file arg)
" n    - set name of viminfo file
set viminfo='20,"50,:20,%,n~/.viminfo

" Use menu to show command-line completion (in 'full' case)
set wildmenu

" Set command-line completion mode:
"   - on first <tab>, when more than one match, list all matches and complete
"     the longest common  string
"   - on second <tab>, complete the next full match and show menu
set wildmode=list:longest,full

" Go back to the position the cursor was on the last time this file was edited
au BufReadPost * if line("'"") > 0 && line("'"") <= line("$")|execute("normal `"")|endif

" Fix my <backspace> key (in Mac OS X Terminal)
set t_kb=
fixdel

" Avoid loading MatchParen plugin
let loaded_matchparen = 1

" netRW: Open files in a split window
let g:netrw_browse_split = 1

"
" MAPPINGS
"

" save changes
map ,s :w<cr>
" exit vim without saving any changes
map ,q :q!<cr>
" exit vim saving changes
map ,w :x<cr>
" switch to upper/lower window quickly
map <c-J> <c-W>j
map <c-K> <c-W>k
" use CTRL-F for omni completion
imap <c-F> 
" map CTRL-L to piece-wise copying of the line above the current one
imap <c-L> @@@<esc>hhkywjl?@@@<cr>P/@@@<cr>3s
" map ,f to display all lines with keyword under cursor and ask which one to
" jump to
nmap ,f [I:let nr = input("Which one: ")<bar>exe "normal " . nr ."[t"<cr>
" use <f6> to toggle line numbers
nmap <silent> <f6> :set number!<cr>
" page down with <space>
nmap <space> <pageDown>
" open filename under cursor in a new window (use current file's working
" directory)
nmap gf :new %:p:h/<cfile><cr>
" map <alt-p> and <alt-P> to paste below/above and reformat
nnoremap <esc>P  P'[v']=
nnoremap <esc>p  p'[v']=
" visual shifting (does not exit Visual mode)
vnoremap < <gv
vnoremap > >gv

" Generic highlight changes
highlight Comment cterm=none ctermfg=Gray
highlight IncSearch cterm=none ctermfg=Black ctermbg=DarkYellow
highlight Search cterm=none ctermfg=Black ctermbg=DarkYellow
highlight String cterm=none ctermfg=DarkGreen
highlight treeDir cterm=none ctermfg=Cyan
highlight treeUp cterm=none ctermfg=DarkYellow
highlight treeCWD cterm=none ctermfg=DarkYellow
highlight netrwDir cterm=none ctermfg=Cyan

" Set the <leader> for combo commands
let mapleader = ","

nmap <silent> <c-n> :NERDTreeToggle<cr>