gvim open dialog file type filter

Question

I like using the file browser in gvim sometimes, however what I don't like is that the file filter is always set to the current file type being edited.

For example, if I have a .cpp file open in the current buffer and go to the file open dialog the file filter is set to "C++ source files (*.cpp *.c++)". I would prefer that headers are displayed too by default (say).

Is there a way to change this default behavior?

Answer 1

Thanks to @benjifisher, I found the help for :browse which shows how to do what I wanted. More specifically, the default filetype plugin for C/C++ contains these lines:

let b:browsefilter = "C++ Source Files (*.cpp *.c++)\t*.cpp;*.c++\n" .
 \ "C Header Files (*.h)\t*.h\n" .
 \ "C Source Files (*.c)\t*.c\n" .
 \ "All Files (*.*)\t*.*\n"

I copied the file into my local vim ftplugin directory and modified to my liking which now takes precedence over the system version.

Answer 2

If anyone, like me, wants a quick and simple way to disable this behaviour altogether in vimrc:

autocmd FileType * let b:browsefilter = '' 

From first reply in this thread

Answer 3

I had a similar issue that I solved without having to copy the c.vim file to ~/.vim/ftplugin. To support *.cc as a C++ extension, in GVim on Ubuntu I edited the /usr/share/vim/vim74/ftplugin/c.vim file to add the extension:

let b:browsefilter = "C++ Source Files (*.cpp *.c++ *cc)\t*.cpp;*.c++;*.cc\n" . \ "C Header Files (*.h)\t*.h\n" . \ "C Source Files (*.c)\t*.c\n" . \ "All Files (*.*)\t*.*\n"

Then restarted GVim and it worked without copying c.vim.