The Problem

It all started when I was editing a Vagrantfile and making more customization. It is simply ruby and having syntax highlighting in it will be easier to edit the file. I always see the following line in the Vagrantfile:

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# vi: set ft=ruby :

but it didn’t seem to do anything for the syntax highlighting. I tried to set the filetype for the Vagrantfile when I was in the editor using

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:set filetype=ruby

it worked like a charm. But I don’t want to do it every time I enter the file. Also I have the same problem with the Gemfile as well as the Berksfile.

The Solution

I did some research and figured out that I can achieve this using the autocmd in vimrc. So added the following lines to my vimrc.

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autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead Gemfile set filetype=ruby
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead Vagrantfile set filetype=ruby
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead Berksfile set filetype=ruby

So whenever I open any of these files, they are highlighted as ruby files and I am happy!