Vim: Sudo Edit Breaks Apache Syntax Highlighting

Question

Sudo Edit (sudo -e) allows unprivileged users to edit files securely. To achieve this, it makes a temporary copy of a file to edit and then copies it over when editing is done.

When I'm editing an apache file (eg, /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mysite.com), sudoedit vim can't figure out that it should use Apache syntax highlighting, so I have to manually :set syntax=apache. I suspect that Vim's rule for syntax highlighting relies on the full path of the file, and since sudoedit changes the file to something like /var/tmp/mysiteRANDOMCHARS.com, it loses that path information.

Is there any way for me to automatically tell Vim that it should use apache syntax highlighting?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This sounds like one of the rare use-cases for the vi modeline feature:

In your .vimrc:

set modeline

And in your Apache config file, somewhere at the top or the bottom:

# vi: syntax=apache

Answer 2

See /usr/share/vim/vim7x/filetype.vim for how Vim determines that a file is an apache file.

In my config, using $ vim or $ sudo -e makes no difference as the .com extension is treated as dcl anyway.

I don't see a smart and solid way to workaround that beside overriding the .com autocommand in your ~/.vimrc:

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.com set ft=apache