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On searching how to set syntax highlighting on in vim, I found this page which says that vimrc should have the following line
syntax on
Why is it not something like set syntax on? Like we have set nu, set ai etc.
With set syntax on, I get this error
$ vi
syntax=
Error detected while processing /home/lazer/.vimrc:
line 30:
E518: Unknown option: on
Hit ENTER or type command to continue
and with set syntax, I get this
$ vi
syntax=
Hit ENTER or type command to continue
It should be syntax on or syntax off.
set syntax=something is used to change the current syntax (c, perl, nasm, etc).
UPDATE: As @garyjohn pointed in comments, it's possible to turn it on/off for the current buffer and its corresponding filetype using set syntax=ON and set syntax=OFF.
set syntax=OFF to turn off syntax highlighting for the current buffer and set syntax=ON to enable syntax highlighting for the current buffer according to the current filetype.