Tag Archives: ftdetect

Editing component files with vim

Editing LCFG component source files using Vim is of course The Right Thing to do, but due to the way these source files are named (typically filename.ext.cin) vim doesn’t necessarily pick up on the filetype, and goodies such as syntax highlighting are lost.

This is easy to fix using vim’s ftdetect system. Some examples for simple types:

" These files are always POD in disguise
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.pod.cin : set filetype=pod
" Slightly contentious: a new filetype is needed, really, but this is a decent match.
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.def.cin : set filetype=cpp
" For other, unknown types, detect from the as-yet undefined shebang:
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.cin : if getline(1) =~ '^#!@SHELL@' | set filetype=sh | endif
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.cin : if getline(1) =~ '^#!@PERL@' | set filetype=perl | endif

(note the latter two lines are specified separately, rather than elseifed, purely for readability). It’s fairly obvious that this can be extended to any file type, and there’s also scope for adding an automatic mapping to allow all files of form file.typ.cin to be mapped automatically to their default .typ. “sub-extension” file type.

Anyway, the above has already improved my productivity no end so I’ll leave the latter exercise to the reader. Comments and contributions are welcome, as always — so long as they’re not suggestions to use Emacs(!)