everybody has their own distinct style of using the editor of their choice. when i am using vim, i prefer to have the following defined in the .vimrc file in the root directory of my user on gnu linux/mac os.

use .vimrc to save your vi settings if you prefer using the plain old vi instead.

if you’re using a mac os, and would like to configure a .vimrc file which can be used globally for all users, then you would want to store it in this location – /usr/share/vim

these are the contents of my .vimrc file

set number
syntax on
filetype indent on
set list
 

set textwidth=79                    " lines longer than 79 columns will be broken
set shiftwidth=4                    " operation >> indents 4 columns; << unindents 4 columns
set tabstop=4                       " a hard TAB displays as 4 columns
set expandtab                       " insert spaces when hitting TABs
set softtabstop=4                   " insert/delete 4 spaces when hitting a TAB/BACKSPACE
set shiftround                      " round indent to multiple of 'shiftwidth'
set autoindent                      " align the new line indent with the previous line
set backspace=indent,eol,start      " fixes the delete issue on Mac