An alternative shell syntax highlighting file for VIM
SHIM's philosophy: Highlight correct code correctly! The highlighter should adapt to the code, not the other way around!
Download the file shim.vim and copy it to ~/.vim/syntax/sh.vim. Any shell files you open should now use SHIM's highlighting. No plugins required!
My bash scripts broke VIM's internal bash highlighting ¯\(ツ)/¯
I soon discovered that the original highlighting file was already quite sophisticated and feature-rich, highlighting mismatching if's and fi's as an example. However, those features require all blocks to be closed in the correct order, leading to errors in combination with heredocs.
print_text () { cat <<-EOF; }
This is a heredoc that
spans over multiple lines.
Note that I closed the function
block way above already
EOFAs making the highlighter 'understand' these constructs looked impossible to me, I chose to make a 'dumb' highlighter instead.
While the highlighter works fine with my code, I cannot ensure that for everyone. If you find a problem, just send me an example.
Particularly the following areas are challenging and/or cannot be correctly implemented:
- Escaped spaces
\ - Command substitution using backticks, especially when nested
Note that the color scheme is quite different to the standard bash highlighter. I have tuned the colors to subjectively "look good" in my terminal vim, so if you find something not looking right in graphical VIM, feel free to suggest improvements.
- The makers and contributors of VIM for an excellent text editor
- The makers and contributors of Bash Hackers for all the detailed information about bash's syntax elements