Nano on server ignores certain syntax coloring

Question

I'm using nano on a server via ssh; on that system, nano doesn't have syntax color enabled by default. So I copied these nanosyntax files (for alternative, see also @CraigBarnes' answer) on the server, and had set up ~/.nanorc as:

include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/php.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/php2.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/sh.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/python.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/html.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/perl.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/ruby.nanorc"
include "~/nanosyntax/syntax-nanorc/js.nanorc"

Now, this is the thing; if I just call:

nano somefile.php

... no php syntax coloring is done. If I try to force:

nano --syntax=php somefile.php

... still no syntax coloring (shown as plain text). However, if I do:

nano ~/.nanorc

... then I do get syntax coloring (that corresponds to .nanorc type file) ?!

So obviously, syntax coloring as such works (i.e. shell and nano are capable of it) - except, it seems to be ignored for some languages, like in this case php ?!

So, does anyone know what is going on - and how could I get syntax coloring also for php files?

Thanks,
Cheers!

Answer 1

I just ran into the same problem, and I fiddled around a bit with the includes to find the error. Surprisingly, turns out that changing the inclusion order fixed the issue:

This works:

include "~/.nano/nanorc.nanorc"
include "~/.nano/sh.nanorc"
# more includes...

This fails to highlight sh files:

include "~/.nano/sh.nanorc"
include "~/.nano/nanorc.nanorc"
# more includes...

So I guess it's probably a bug (in nano 2.2.2; worked fine in nano 2.1.7)

Answer 2

Hm... well, it seems there has been an upgrade on that server I was using; originally, nano didn't have syntax coloring by default, which is why I used my own separate ~/.nanorc.

Now, however, on the upgraded server, nano seems to work with php syntax coloring by default - and me having my own separate ~/.nanorc seems to have conflicted; because, once I commented all the entries in the private ~/.nanorc (with an #), php syntax coloring was back!!

Whowouldathunkit ?! :)
Cheers!

---

EDIT: Just to add a couple of notes about nano:

As noted above, syntax coloring is forced with --syntax switch; to see which syntaxes are available:

grep 'include' /etc/nanorc |       # find lines containing 'include' in nanorc
  grep -v '^#' |                   # don't process lines that start with '#'
    sed 's_.*/\(.*\)\.nanorc"_\1_' # extract plain filenames

Result of this command is something like:

nanorc
c
css
debian
gentoo
html
...

So to force "nanorc" syntax coloring, you use:

nano --syntax=nanorc /usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc

.. or forcing "bash" shell script syntax coloring (especially useful with bashrc) would be:

nano --syntax=sh ~/.bashrc