Nano syntax highlighting in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com//questions/9642617

Question

How to enable syntax highlighting for nano in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)?

According to what I found so far on Google is that it has got to do with /.nanorc file. I have no idea how to get it or make it?

When I try to find nano in my terminal this is what I get:

Notra:~ Sukhvir$ whereis nano
/usr/bin/nano

According to what I found on Internet this is the file I need to edit:

~/.nanorc

But how do I get to it/how to open it/if I don't have it then how to make it?

I am a bit new to programming folks, so step-by-step instructions will be highly appreciated.

I need it for C mainly.

According to what I found online, I have to paste this into the .nanorc file:

include "/usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc"
include "/usr/share/nano/c.nanorc"

However this will not work because there is no such directory as /usr/share/nano.

I also just did ls /usr/share/ and according to the results there is no nano in that directory. Is this a Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) issue or an issue on my Mac?

Was it helpful?

Solution

Here are some steps to help you out.

  1. Create a new directory in /usr/local/share/ called 'nano' like this:

mkdir /usr/local/share/nano

  1. Now, using nano, make a nano resource file for your C syntax like this:

nano /usr/local/share/nano/c.nanorc`

  1. Now put your C code highlighting in this file and save it. Here is a link to some possible C syntax highlighting:

http://code.google.com/p/nanosyntax/source/browse/trunk/syntax-nanorc/c.nanorc

  1. Save that file and now open your user’s nano resource file by typing:

nano ~/.nanorc

  1. In this file, add a reference to the c.nanorc file you just made like this:

include "/usr/local/share/nano/c.nanorc"

  1. Save your user resource file.

Now, when you open up C files, you should see syntax highlighting. You can add additional syntax highlighting for different types of files using the same method. Just add more lines to your ~/.nanorc file.

Note that depending on your user permissions, you may have to precede some of the above commands with sudo and then enter your root password.

OTHER TIPS

On Mac, Homebrew (brew) will allow you to easily upgrade nano to a newer version than the one that came with Mac OSX.

Install brew, then install a new version of nano from the Terminal.

brew install nano

Installing this way includes the /usr/local/share/nano folder containing the default syntax highlight files. You can now include "/usr/local/share/nano/c.nanorc" in ~/.nanorc.

Bonus: a run-once one-liner to add all languages.

/bin/ls /usr/local/share/nano/*.nanorc | xargs -I {} echo 'include "{}"' >> ~/.nanorc

I'm maintaining a bunch of fairly accurate syntax definitions for nano here: https://github.com/craigbarnes/nanorc. The default "example" definitions that come with nano are very poor quality, as are those mentioned above.

2018 Update

  1. Install Homebrew so you can download latest version of nano
  2. brew install nano
  3. nano ~/.nanorc
  4. Add file path to homebrew nano's syntax highlighting
    • (updated with new langs such as JS)
    • include "/usr/local/Cellar/nano/*/share/nano/*.nanorc"

1st * allows us to include whichever version of nano you have, instead of 2.9.3 (for example). Second * includes all .nanorc files so we have syntax highlighting for all languages that are included!

Testing

cd ~/Desktop
touch test.py
touch test.js
nano test.py
nano test.js

Further .nanorc Customization

I added "set mouse" and "set smooth" to my .nanorc file as well. This allows for mouse use and smooth scrolling. Find more info on these options by running nano --help.

Updated Syntax Highlighting

https://github.com/scopatz/nanorc has "improved" syntax highlighting, if desired.

Easy flow:

brew update && brew install nano

After new nano is installed add this line to ~/.nanorc to enable syntax highlighting for all provided syntaxes:

include /usr/local/share/nano/*.nanorc

As mentioned by Mark Mikofski in the comment to another answer, this is the maintained repo for nanorc files:

https://github.com/scopatz/nanorc

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