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Old 16th May 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gosha View Post
why is using syntax highlighting to be considered a bad habit?
You may be taking the comments made in this thread a bit too literally.

There is nothing inherently evil about color syntax highlighting, however if it becomes a crutch such that you have to have it available, then this may become a problem when you have to migrate to systems which don't have your specific customizations configured.

I use color syntax highlighting on occasions for similar reasons: it can help bring to focus certain aspects of structure, but I can also live without it. Emacs colors differently (by default) than vim, so because I have spent a lot of time in Emacs lately, suddenly moving to vim initially seems odd. Most editors make the colors configurable, but I don't find the default choices so distasteful in these environments to do anything about it. Besides, on OpenBSD systems, I tend to use mg(1) which doesn't provide color syntax highlighting at all. Also, it's better because it is faster.

I suspect the consternation you may be reading in this thread result from the fact Linux distributions tend to have the output of ls(1) color-coded. Personally, I find this distracting, but that is my opinion, & preference. If others find it helpful, fine. This debate can quickly decay into a religious war which doesn't possess significant value.

Now if you start treading on my ANSI color-fied shell prompt, then those are fighting words.

So it's a question of what has been your experience, & what your choices are based upon that experience. Nothing more. If you like color-syntax highlighting great. If you don't, that's fine too. It's merely a feature.
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