Change syntax color in vim?

Question

I have syntax highlighting on, but comments are set to dark blue. This hard for me to read against a black terminal. How do I change it so that the comments are colored green instead?

Answer 1

Take a look at syncolor.vim. You'll find it in /usr/share/vim/vim{version}/syntax/.

Excerpt:

" There are two sets of defaults: for a dark and a light background.
if &background == "dark"
  SynColor Comment  term=bold cterm=NONE ctermfg=Cyan ctermbg=NONE gui=NONE guifg=#80a0ff guibg=NONE
  SynColor Constant term=underline cterm=NONE ctermfg=Magenta ctermbg=NONE gui=NONE guifg=#ffa0a0 guibg=NONE
  SynColor Special  term=bold cterm=NONE ctermfg=LightRed ctermbg=NONE gui=NONE guifg=Orange guibg=NONE

So the first SynColor line looks of interest. I confess I don't know if you can override this, as opposed to changing this file.

Answer 2

Probably you just need to tell vim that you have a dark background:

set background=dark

This should change the highlighting to something better readable.

Answer 3

$VIMRUNTIME/colors/README.txt (on my system, /usr/share/vim/vim72/colors)

Answer 4

If you want to change the color of a comment without changing the background, you can use the highlight command. Vim documentation on :highlight

For example, :hi Comment term=bold ctermfg=Cyan guifg=#80a0ff gui=bold