error message in simple .vimrc file

Question

When I put in my .vimrc file:

"set backspace =2; set nocompatible; syntax on;"

It works fine and uses these settings when I open a new vim file however I get the error message:

Error detected while processing /mount/autofs/home_stude1/a/afarah/.vimrc: line 1: E474: Invalid argument: backspace =2; line 2: E488: Trailing characters: nocompatible;

probably trivial, but not sure how to fix it.

Answer 1

Use the following instead.

set backspace=2 nocompatible
syntax on

Vim's script syntax does not use semicolons AFAIK.