This repository holds {lang}.nanorc files that have improved definitions of syntax highlighting for various languages.

There are many ways to install this repo, however... here are two I recommend.

Copy the following code to download and run the installer script:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crewshin/nanorc/master/install.sh | sh

If your machine doesn't have curl command, use this code:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crewshin/nanorc/master/install.sh -O- | sh

Some syntax definitions which exist in Nano upstream may be preferable to the ones provided by this package.
The install.sh script may be run with -l or --lite to insert the included syntax definitions from this package with lower precedence than the ones provided by the standard package.

The files should be placed inside of the ~/.nano/ directory.

You can put the files in another directory inside the correct .nano folder. For example: ~/.nano/nanorc/. For readability will use $install_path for the path of your choose (in system wide the path is always /usr/share/nano-syntax-highlighting/).

For user, run:

git clone https://github.com/crewshin/nanorc.git $install_path

For system wide, run:

sudo git clone https://github.com/crewshin/nanorc.git $install_path

After installation, you need to inform nano to used the new highlight files. The configuration file is located at ~/.nanorc, for users, and at /etc/nanorc, for system wide. If this file doesn't exist, create a new one.

There are three ways:

Append the content of the folder in one line, with wildcard:

echo "include $install_path/*.nanorc" >> ~/.nanorc or
echo "include $install_path/*.nanorc" >> /etc/nanorc

Add your preferable languages one by onento the file. For example:

## C/C++
include "~/.nano/c.nanorc"

cd into the repo dir and run:

python combine.py

This will loop through all .nanorc files in the repo and create a new files named All.nanorc.

Then run

echo "include $install_path/ALL.nanorc" >> ~/.nanorc to use.

\< and \> are regular character escapes on MacOS.
The bug is fixed in Nano, but this might be a problem if you are using an older version
If this is the case, replace them respectively with [[:<:]] and [[:>:]]. This is reported in Issue 52.

It is a good question, but the way that nano reads the files matters.
In other words, the regex instructions should be in a specific order (you can see that in some nanorc files).
So, if we include or extendsyntax (yes, there is also this command) the colors or other things won't be work well.
The best way to do is copying and editing the original files (if it is needed).
Please see this issue.
But if some original nanorc file needs an update, feel free to patch it!

Please see this issue.

Some of these files are derived from the original Nano editor repo