Updated: July 8th, 2009
Today I was asked a question about defining custom extensions for vim syntax highlighting such that, for example, vim would know that example.lmx is actually of type xml and apply xml syntax highlighting to it. I know vim already automatically does it not just based on extension but by looking for certain strings inside the text, like <?xml but what if my file doesn't have such strings?
After digging around I found the solution. Add the following to ~/.vimrc (the vim configuration file):
1 2 3 | syntax on filetype on au BufNewFile,BufRead *.lmx set filetype=xml |
After applying it, my .lmx file is highlighted:
Same principle works, for instance, for mysql dumps that I have to do from time to time. If they don't have a .sql extension, you'll get something like:
After
1 2 3 | syntax on filetype on au BufNewFile,BufRead *.dump set filetype=sql |
everything is fine:
But why and how does it work, you ask?
| :help au | :au[tocmd] [group] {event} {pat} [nested] {cmd} Add {cmd} to the list of commands that Vim will execute automatically on {event} for a file matching {pat}. |
| :help BufNewFile | When starting to edit a file that doesn't exist. |
| :help BufRead | When starting to edit a new buffer, after reading the file into the buffer. |
| :help filetype | will actually tell this whole story in part B. |
And that's how you do it, folks.
Artem Russakovskii is a San Francisco programmer, blogger, and future millionaire (that last part is in the works). Follow Artem on Twitter (@ArtemR) or subscribe to the RSS feed.
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beer planet is a blog about technology, programming, computers, and geek life. It is run by Artem Russakovskii - a local San Francisco geek who currently works at 
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I used to hate VIM when I first started programming. Now I am powerless without it. It's amazing how feature-rich the text editor is. I still learn new VIM tricks 3-4 times a month.
This is the best ever, thanks for posting this!
I would only add that you can spare yourself the "syntax on" and "filetype on" lines if these are already your defaults and just add the new to-be-highlighted extensions with the "au" line.
Belissima!
It was very helpful. Thanks!
Thanks for the tip, this helped me today
Thanks a lot !
I was looking for this for a long time !
Bye,
Roger
You made my day. Thanks!
In case this recipe doesn't works for anyone, just use this;
:syntax on
:set syn=php or whatever extension you want.
Thanks for the tip!
You are awesome. Thanks for this!
Thanks a lot dude.
i was looking for this tip from a long time.
Its working just fine.
Running great on Vim on Slackware! Thanks for putting out this tip. It saved me a lot of digging through Vim's documentation. =)
Awesome! Real time saver. Was preparing to RTFM
Thanks – I needed this badly for Magento's .phtml files (which are actually PHP). Awesome!
Thanks.
Thanks google, and thanks to you for the great tip. works like a champ.
It may have been a while but it's still useful. Thanks!
Just what I was looking for.
Thanks dude!