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My .vimrc file is as follows:

filetype plugin indent on
syntax on               " enables syntax, e.g. text colour
set number              " show line numbers

The command I use to open files is vim filename. Despite this when I open some files I get all the nice fancy colours in my files whereas I have some files that I can't get the colours to work at all. For example, when I'm editing my .vimrc file the syntax works. When I'm editing another file (called filename.usr - it's just a text file) the syntax doesn't work.

Do you know why this is the case and how I can get the syntax to work correctly for all my files?

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    What "syntax" do you expect a file named filename.usr to have? What words mean something special depends on what the file is used for -- it's not going to highlight any arbitrary file. Nov 7, 2017 at 16:31
  • Ah okay, I understand, thank you. How would I go about, then, giving the .usr file the characteristics to highlight different expressions? Or to give it those of another file type? Nov 7, 2017 at 16:34
  • The syntax definition files which may be installed somewhere under share/vim/vim*/syntax/* may be of interest. I guess for a unknown file type one could go all Jackson Pollack and spray colors everywhere?
    – thrig
    Nov 7, 2017 at 16:38

1 Answer 1

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If you want to treat files ending in .usr like some other type of file (e.g., like a vimrc file), then you can add this to your ~/.vimrc:

autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.usr setlocal filetype=vim

Then, when you open files ending in .usr, vim will apply the given filetype's syntax highlighting.

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