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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.
In the meantime, if you found this article useful, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee below.
beer planet is a blog about technology, programming, computers, and geek life. It is run by Artem Russakovskii - a local San Francisco geek who is currently pursuing his own projects and regularly enjoys hacking Android, PHP, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, Perl, and regular expressions, working on Wordpress plugins and tools, tweaking MySQL queries and server settings, administering Linux machines, blogging, learning new things, and other geeky stuff.
Artem loves commenting on other people's blogs and reading comments on his own, so go ahead and leave one.
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!
Thanks! It's exactly what I needed.
Hey I am trying to do this but it is not quite working as expected. It will highlight that file type BUT it also highlights other file types using that highlighting. (Bad).
My problem is documented here if anyone has any input that would be much appreciated. (You don't need a username or password to reply).
http://superuser.com/questions/113455/vim-highlighting-for-specific-file-types
Jake
Looks like you found the solution. SuperUser, StackOverflow, etc are great, aren't they?
Thx for the solution. I was needed to edit *.class files as php-scripts and you did a great help to me =)
Thanks for the tip. Just to add to this, the filetype should be all in small letters. I wanted to set the filetype to "Specman" (as it appears in filetypes list in the gvim menu), it didn't work untill I changed the filetype to "specman".
Good one! You fixed my fugly phtml files.
so cool artem! i searched on google and it gave me an answer. not that it did not happen before. but this time, the answer is from someone i know~
Haha, wouldn't be the first time this happens, but I love every time it does!
Still helping people! Thanks
Thanks
I already knew how to use :setf, this is much better.
Have a good day.
Thank you, man.
I hope you get to be millionaire.
I had to edit a .ofx file today. Following your example i added this to my .gvimrc file
augroup OFX
au! BufNewFile,BufRead *ofx set filetype=xml
augroup end
Worked great!
This was very helpful! Thank you!
thanks for the hint.
i love vim. it is a pain in the ass to get started but once you are in to it, you will never choose another text editor!
best text editor for hackers.
see ya folks
Thanks! Just what I needed
Perfect ! thanks
Years are passing and your tip is immortal
Thanks!
Another Happy user for this tip.
Thanks
Thanks a lot! Really useful
Thank you. I've been staring at a lot of black and white, and you just brought color to my world.
Thanks for the tip. Now my .less files look like proper CSS.
Thanks! I was able to get Vim (on Mac Terminal.app) to recognize as Markdown files wth the extenson *.md. (Previously, it only recognized as Markdown files with extenstion *.markdown.)
filetype on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.md set filetype=markdown
Thanks again!
Only issue I ran into was that I did not add "syntax on", as it was already in my .vimrc. Unfortunately, it was added as follows:
if has('syntax') && (&t_Co > 2)
syntax on
endif
The file type did not have a syntax (until I later defined one), and thus it was never enabled. I prefer my "syntax on" only in those conditions, so I forced it on for the extension in question by entering as:
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.file syntax on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.file set filetype=html
Cheers!
thanks for the tip.
works like a charm.
this is cool thanks for the tip
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Thank you. it helped me.
if you need verilog, just put
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.v_et set filetype=verilog
on the GUI it is "Verilog HDL" which will not work on the command line
Many Thanks.
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