How to fix issue pasting text with comment # into linux causes subsequent lines of text to get double commented.

From time to time I paste text into scripts and config files into vi/vim on linux and you find doing so corrupts your text because there is a comment character # and every subsequent line gets commented.

If you are color coding you also find all the text after the first comment goes the comment color (say blue on black.)

I'm not a fanatical unix guy so for a long time I worked around this and found it quite infuriating. Here is how to avoid this when it comes up.

To solve this problem do:

• Before entering insert mode run :set paste.
• After you leave insert mode with :set nopaste.