Autocommands for Matlab in vim?
vim
Solution
If you want to have a large number of settings for {filetype}, you should put them into `~/.vim/ftplugin/{filetype}.vim` or into file that matches `~/.vim/ftplugin/{filetype}/**/*.vim` (examples: `~/.vim/ftplugin/ruby/foo.vim`, `~/.vim/ftplugin/ruby/foo/bar.vim`). In this case you don't need any autocommands at all. If you still want to use autocommands, use the following:
augroup lang_matlab
autocmd!
autocmd FileType matlab setlocal ts=4 sw=4 et
augroup END
. Note two things: FileType event (it is there and it is not BufRead,BufNewFile) and `setlocal` instead of plain `set`. First is intended to be used for filetype settings, second is how buffer-specific options must be set.
About why perl and ruby settings work and why matlab settings does not: your example code is just the same as
augroup lang_perl
autocmd!
augroup END
augroup lang_ruby
autocmd!
augroup END
set tabstop=4 " tabstop length N in spaces
set shiftwidth=4 " make >> and friends (<<, ^T, ^D) shift N, not the default 8
set expandtab " Use spaces instead of tabs
set tabstop=2 " tabstop length N in spaces
set shiftwidth=2 " make >> and friends (<<, ^T, ^D) shift N, not the default 8
set expandtab " Use spaces instead of tabs
So, you effectively set `ts=2 sw=2 et`. But the `$VIMRUNTIME/ftplugin/perl.vim` contains the following code:
setlocal tabstop=4
setlocal shiftwidth=4
so, `ts=4 sw=4` for perl is set into `ftplugin/perl.vim`, not in your vimrc (if you have installed perl-support plugin). You can check it by replacing `tabstop=4` with `tabstop=8` in vimrc.
Problem
I use several different programming languages every day, and I'd like to have different tab widths (in spaces) for each. For example: I use the "standard" 2 spaces for Ruby, but all our existing Matlab code uses 4 spaces. I have this from my personal `~/.vimrc`: ``` augroup lang_perl au! set tabstop=4 " tabstop length N in spaces set shiftwidth=4 " make >> and friends (<<, ^T, ^D) shift N, not the default 8 set expandtab " Use spaces instead of tabs augroup END augroup lang_ruby au! set tabstop=2 " tabstop length N in spaces set shiftwidth=2 " make >> and friends (<<, ^T, ^D) shift N, not the default 8 set expandtab " Use spaces instead of tabs augroup END ``` Those work, but the following doesn't: ``` augroup lang_matlab au! set tabstop=4 " tabstop length N in spaces set shiftwidth=4 " make >> and friends (<<, ^T, ^D) shift N, not the default 8 set expandtab " Use spaces instead of tabs augroup END ``` I really don't understand how `augroup lang_ruby` figures out that I'm editing a Ruby file. (My searches brought up `ftdetect`, but the solution wasn't obvious.) It doesn't seem like `vim` knows that I'm editing Matlab using `augroup lang_matlab`. What do I change to make this work?