I'm trying to set a 'default' syntax highlighting scheme for nano when I'm editing files with no extension such as /etc/nginx/sites-available/default or /etc/ssh/sshd_config but I can't seem to make it work.
I've copied the c syntax highlighting file into /usr/share/nano/default.nanorc and then added include "/usr/share/nano/deafult.nanorc" to my ~/.nanorc file but I'm still not getting highlighting for files with no extension.
Anyone know how to enable this?
You can define this by yourself. Here is a good example from Arch Linux Forums.
Copy the following code and save it in /usr/share/nano/ as conf.nanorc
# config file highlighting
syntax "conf" "(.(conf|config|cfg|cnf|rc|lst|list|defs|ini|desktop|mime|types|preset|cache|seat|service|htaccess)$|(^|/)(\w*crontab|mirrorlist|group|hosts|passwd|rpc|netconfig|shadow|fstab|inittab|inputrc|protocols|sudoers)$|conf.d/|.config/)"
default text
color magenta "^.*$"
special values
icolor brightblue "(^|\s|=)(default|true|false|on|off|yes|no)(\s|$)"
keys
icolor cyan "^\s(set\s+)?[A-Z0-9_/.%@+-]+\s([:]|>)"
commands
color blue "^\s*set\s+<"
punctuation
color blue "[.]"
numbers
color red "(^|\s|[[/:|<>(){}=,]|])[-+]?0-9*%?($|>)"
keys
icolor cyan "^\s*($if )?([A-Z0-9_/.%@+-]|\s)+="
punctuation
color blue "/"
color brightwhite "(]|[()<>[{},;:=])"
color brightwhite "(^|[|{|:)\s*-(\s|$)"
section headings
icolor brightyellow "^\s([([A-Z0-9_.-]|\s)+])+\s$"
color brightcyan "^\s((Sub)?Section\s(=|>)|End(Sub)?Section\s$)"
color brightcyan "^\s$(end)?if(\s|$)"
URLs
icolor green "\b(([A-Z]+://|www[.])[A-Z0-9/:#?&$=_.-]+)(\b|$| )"
XML-like tags
icolor brightcyan "</?\w+((\s\w+\s=)?\s("[^"]"|'[^']'|!?[A-Z0-9_:/]))(\s*/)?>"
strings
color yellow ""(\.|[^"])"" "'(\.|[^'])'"
comments
color white "#.$"
color blue "^\s##.$"
color white "^;.$"
color white start="<!--" end="-->"
Then include this configuration in /etc/nanorc file as
## Configuration files (catch-all syntax)
include "/usr/share/nano/conf.nanorc"
The first code line in the snippet includes a regular expression that defines for which file names this syntax highlighting should be used. Whenever you encounter a config file that is not matched by this, but you would still like to open it with syntax highlighting, you can manually select this syntax with nano's -Y switch, like so:
nano -Y conf myConfigFile
Source: nano syntax highlighting: catch-all syntax for configuration files.
The nanorc file should have
syntax "default"
with no regexp after it.
Nano syntax highlight all files with and without extension:
Create backup from default file
yes | cp /usr/share/nano/default.nanorc /usr/share/nano/default.nanorc.backup
Create a copy from a config file
yes | cp /usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc /usr/share/nano/default.nanorc
Change syntax extension name to default
sed -i -e 's/syntax "sh" "\\.sh$"/syntax "default"/g' /usr/share/nano/default.nanorc
Store all .nanrc file in the include file
ls -1 /usr/share/nano/*.nanorc | sed 's/^\//include \//' >> ~/.nanorc
