I can't believe I am typing a question for a simple thing like this but here we are. I can't for the life of me figure out what the exact name for the settings file is for vim on Windows (.vimrc
does not work on Windows). And if I have names right (read the next para) then I don't know why it is not picking up the settings from it.
I tried creating _vimrc
and _gvimrc
in the root directory where I copied the file from the example settings file that came installed with vim. I set the following command on top of the example commands:
set nobackup set nowritebackup set guifont=Courier_New:h11:cANSI
It is not accepting this file (whether it is named _vimrc
or _gvimrc
, I tried both) as the settings file as the font has not changed on the next start-up and still writes backup files.
On Windows, when you start Vim normally, it *either* runs the file "C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\_vimrc" (where "(user name)" is replaced by the actual user name); *or*, if that file doesn't exist (it usually doesn't, for most users), it runs the file "C:\Program Files\vim\_vimrc".
In the terminal, type vi . vimrc . This will create an empty vimrc system file which you want to use. In the file, type set number , and then hit Esc on the keyboard and type in :wq .
It may be under [Your Installation Directory]/Vim/ . In my case, the _vimrc file is under C:/Program Files (x86)/Vim/ . Because C:/Program Files (x86)/Vim was the default installation directory when I installed Vim on Windows 10 from the executable installer available at https://www.vim.org/download.php.
my _vimrc
/_gvimrc
is stored at C:/Users/<ME>/_vimrc
and is working fine.
It's generally a good idea to keep personal settings separate from installation files.
To get more information about the search paths for your configuration files, type :he vimrc-intro
.
And be careful: the docs say
For MS-DOS and MS-Windows you can use one of these:
$HOME/_vimrc
$VIM/_vimrc
While this is absolutely true, it could be a bit surprising that $VIM
does not expand to e.g. C:/Program Files/vim/<your_version>
(this is what $VIMRUNTIME
holds) but only to C:/Program Files/vim/
.
This said, C:/Program Files/vim/_vimrc
should be read during startup.
Why not just edit the vimrc file in vim itself and figure it out its name?. Using the following command.
:e $MYVIMRC
As ghiscoding mentions in a comment, you may need to run Vim as an administrator to be able to save your changes.
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