How do I make vim highlight math properly in the align environment?

Question

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, I'm new to the site :/ I asked the same question in TeX StackExchange, and I was pointed here.

My issue is this: when editing in vim, my syntax file highlights underscores and carets when found in non-math text, which is fine, except vim doesn't recognize that "align" is a math environment.

A user in TeX StackExchange suggested that I take a look at my tex.vim syntax file. I don't have one in ~/.vim, but I do have one in /usr/share/vim/vim74/syntax/. There seems to be no real difference in the way align and equation are treated in the syntax file, yet Vim highlights only equation and not align. How might I fix this?

Answer 1

This may or may not apply to you since you're using vim version 7.4, but the following is true for the current vim version (8.0.1525 as I write this).

Sometime recently, syntax support for LaTeX packages such as amsmath was removed from the default syntax files. As far as I know these syntax files are now only available here http://www.drchip.org/astronaut/vim/; scroll down to "Latex Package Support" (or direct link to plugin vimball for amsmath).

Alternatively, you can install a different latex filetype plugin which has support for amsmath syntax, for example vimtex. This plugin does much more than just syntax highlighting though.