chys's random notes » Emacs http://en.chys.info Study more problems; Talk less of isms. Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:56:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 VIM modelines http://en.chys.info/2009/02/vim-modelines/ http://en.chys.info/2009/02/vim-modelines/#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:23:04 +0000 chys http://blog.chys.info/?p=255 Related posts:
  1. VIM sessions
]]> I was wondering why all Emacs modeline samples I found online worked so well, but no VIM ones worked at all. In fact, VIM by default disables modelines because it is a potential security hole. (This is too bad. They can enable only safe instructions by default.) Add set modeline to ~/.vimrc to enable it.

A modeline is some instructions to the editor put in the comments, usually in the beginning of a text file. The most common use is probably to set the syntax highlighting rule, tab width and indent.

Modeline example:
/* -*- Mode: C++; tab-width: 2; indent-tabs-mode: nil; c-basic-offset: 2 -*- */
/* vim:set ft=cpp ts=2 sw=2 sts=2 cindent: */

The first line is for Emacs and the second for VIM. Note that an Emacs modeline must appear in the beginning of a file, while VIM modelines can be put anywhere.

Basicly, these two lines force the file type to be C++ (especially useful for .h files, which are by default treated as C sources), set the width of a tab to be 2 characters and enable auto indention. (My knowledge about Emacs is very limited, so probably this is not accurate.)

Some resources:
1. GNU Emacs modeline documentation
2. VIM modeline documentation

Related posts:

  1. VIM sessions

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