With recently installed CentOS 7.6 and xfce,

using vim to edit .dircolors, with vim colors enabled, I discovered on the line

DIR 01:36 # directory

if I change the 01 to 0 or 00 , (but not 000) zeros disappears. If I search for 00, it is found.

This happens for other, but not all lines. I could prevent this with

syntax off

but then I lose the colors, which are helpful.
How can I prevent anything from disappearing like this without losing the colors?

This problem does not occur using the same vim at level 3, but there I have fewer colors.

Thanks,
Mike.

Michael D. Berger