Use Syntax Highlighting In Nano Editor [Quick Linux Tip]

Nano is an easy to use Linux shell text editor. Here is a very easy to follow tip to get syntax highlighting in Nano.

Enter this in a terminal (for Ubuntu):

sudo nano /etc/nanorc

And at the end of the file, paste this (or if this already exists in your nanorc file, remove the "#" before each "include" line):

## Nanorc files
include "/usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc"

## C/C++
include "/usr/share/nano/c.nanorc"

## HTML
include "/usr/share/nano/html.nanorc"

## TeX
include "/usr/share/nano/tex.nanorc"

## Quoted emails (under e.g. mutt)
include "/usr/share/nano/mutt.nanorc"

## Patch files
include "/usr/share/nano/patch.nanorc"

## Manpages
include "/usr/share/nano/man.nanorc"

## Groff
include "/usr/share/nano/groff.nanorc"

## Perl
include "/usr/share/nano/perl.nanorc"

## Python
include "/usr/share/nano/python.nanorc"

## Ruby
include "/usr/share/nano/ruby.nanorc"

## Java
include "/usr/share/nano/java.nanorc"

## Assembler
include "/usr/share/nano/asm.nanorc"

## Bourne shell scripts
include "/usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc"

## POV-Ray
include "/usr/share/nano/pov.nanorc"

Now close Nano and open the nanorc file again and see the difference:

nano /etc/nanorc