Where is my vimrc file

Question

I have been using Vim  and I would really like to save my settings  The problem I am having is that I cannot find my  vimrc file  and it is not in the standard  home user  vimrc location  How might I find this file

User · Answer

From cmd  Windows    C Users You gt   vim foo txt    Now in Vim  enter command mode by typing       i e  Shift         tabedit  HOME  vimrc

User · Answer

Short answer   To create your vimrc  start up Vim and do one of the following    e  HOME  vimrc    on Unix  Mac or OS 2   e  HOME  vimrc    on Windows   e s  vimrc        on Amiga   Insert the settings you want  and save the file   Note that exisitence of this file will disable the compatible option  See below for details   Long answer   There are two kinds of vimrc    the user vimrc in  HOME the system vimrc in  VIM  on Amiga systems  s  vimrc is considered a user vimrc    The user vimrc file often does not exist until created by the user  If you cannot find  HOME  vimrc  or  HOME  vimrc on Windows  then you can  and probably should  just create it   The system vimrc should normally be left unmodified and is located in the  VIM  directory  The system vimrc is not a good place you keep your personal settings  If you modify this file your changes may be overwritten if you ever upgrade Vim  Also  changes here will affect other users on a multi-user system  In most cases  settings in the user vimrc will override settings in the system vimrc   From  help vimrc      A file that contains initialization commands is called a  vimrc  file    Each line in a vimrc file is executed as an Ex command line   It is   sometimes also referred to as  exrc  file   They are the same type of   file  but  exrc  is what Vi always used   vimrc  is a Vim specific   name   Also see  vimrc-intro        Places for your personal initializations       Unix             HOME  vimrc or  HOME  vim vimrc     OS 2             HOME  vimrc   HOME vimfiles vimrc                     or  VIM  vimrc  or  vimrc      MS-Windows       HOME  vimrc   HOME vimfiles vimrc                     or  VIM  vimrc     Amiga           s  vimrc  home  vimrc  home vimfiles vimrc                     or  VIM  vimrc       The files are searched in the order specified above and only the first   one that is found is read     MacOS counts as Unix for the above    Note that the mere existence of a user vimrc will change Vim s behavior by turning off the compatible option  From  help compatible-default      When Vim starts  the  compatible  option is on   This will be used when Vim   starts its initializations   But as soon as a user vimrc file is found  or a   vimrc file in the current directory  or the  VIMINIT  environment variable is   set  it will be set to  nocompatible    This has the side effect of setting or   resetting other options  see  compatible     But only the options that have   not been set or reset will be changed         VIM may not be set in your shell  but is always set inside Vim  If you want to see what it s set to  start up Vim and use the command  echo  VIM

User · Answer

Here are a few more tips     In Arch Linux the global one is at  etc vimrc  There are some comments in there with helpful details  Since the filename starts with a    it s hidden unless you use ls -a to show ALL files  Typing  version while in Vim will show you a bunch of interesting information including the file location  If you re not sure what    vimrc means look at this question

User · Answer

These methods work  if you already have a  vimrc file     scriptnames list all the  vim files that Vim loaded for you  including your  vimrc file    e  MYVIMRC open  amp  edit the current  vimrc that you are using  then use Ctrl   G to view the path in status bar

User · Answer

I tried everything in the previous answer and couldn t find a  vimrc file  so I had to make one   I copied the example file  cp vimrc example vim    vimrc   I had to create the file  copying from  usr share vim vim74 vimrc example vim to    vimrc  Those were the instructions in the vimrc example file   My solution is for Unix for other operating systems  According to the Vim documentation  your destination path should be as follows       For Unix and OS 2        vimrc     For Amiga             s  vimrc     For MS-DOS and Win32   VIM  vimrc     For OpenVMS           sys login  vimrc

User · Answer

For whatever reason  these answers didn t quite work for me  This is what worked for me instead   In Vim  the  version command gives you the paths of system and user vimrc and gvimrc files  among other things   and the output looks something like this    system vimrc file    VIM vimrc     user vimrc file    HOME  vimrc      user exrc file    HOME  exrc  system gvimrc file    VIM gvimrc    user gvimrc file    HOME  gvimrc    The one you want is user vimrc file    HOME  vimrc   So to edit the file  vim  HOME  vimrc  Source  Open vimrc file

User · Answer

actually you have one vimrc in   etc vimrc  when you edit something in there the changes will effect all users  if you don t want that you can create a local vimrc in     vimrc  the changes here will only effect the one user

User · Answer

on unix vim --version tells you the various locations of the vim config files       system vimrc file    VIM vimrc       user vimrc file    HOME  vimrc   2nd user vimrc file      vim vimrc        user exrc file    HOME  exrc         defaults file    VIMRUNTIME defaults vim    fall-back for  VIM    usr share vim

User · Answer

I d like to share how I set showing the line number as the default on Mac    In a terminal  type cd  This will help you go to the home folder  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  This will set the line number shown in the default setting file vimrc and save it  vi something to see if this works  If not  try to restart the terminal completely    If in a terminal  type in cd  usr share vim   go to that folder  and type in ls  You can directly see a file named vimrc  But it s a system file that says read only  I feel it s not a good idea to try modify it  So following the above steps to create a vimrc by yourself is better  It worked for me

User · Answer

In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server  SLES  and openSUSE the global one is located at  etc vimrc   To edit it  simply do vi  etc vimrc

User · Answer

The vimrc file in Ubuntu  12 04  Precise Pangolin    I tried  scriptnames in Vim  and it shows both  usr share vim vimrc and    vimrc   But I had manually created    vimrc

User · Answer

You need to create it  In most installations I ve used it hasn t been created by default   You usually create it as    vimrc

User · Answer

Open Vim  and in normal mode type    echo  VIM

User · Answer

echo  MYVIMRC    will give you the location of your  vimrc file    e  MYVIMRC   will open it

User · Answer

Useful Information can be obtained using the find command  find   -iname  quot  vimrc  quot  -type f 2 gt  dev null   There are many answers already  but it can sometimes be useful to simply run a  quot find quot  for anything containing the name  quot vimrc quot   The reason is that this will show you what files you actualy have available on the system currently  rather than what you might put on your system   The information for which you would obtain from  version as explained in other answers   Example result on my system On my system this produces  usr share vim vim82 vimrc example vim  usr share vim vim82 gvimrc example vim  etc vim gvimrc  etc vim vimrc  etc vim vimrc tiny  Which is quite useful because it tells us that there are 2 example files installed in the share directorys for both gvim and vim  and that there are also some system-wide config files below  etc   On my system  I also have a file at    vimrc but this does not appear in this list because it is a link to another file  stored under   Linux-Config  But you won t have this directory  it s specific to machines I use on my own network  Detailed Explanation of find syntax used Explanation   find starting at the root directory    find works recursively  anything containing the case insensitive regex  vimrc  which means any name with vimrc  case insensitive  in it somewhere  can be preceeded or followed by anything or nothing     type   files  not directory symlink etc  throw all errors to  dev null otherwise the output is spammed with unreadable errors from  proc

User · Answer

As additional information  mostly in macOS  the  vimrc file is located at directory    usr share vim  vimrc

[vim] Where is my .vimrc file?

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