Setting a permanent filetype for my config-files

[runarcn]

Hi!
I'm currently getting acquainted with Micro and so far it seems like a really good text editor and a great replacement for nano.

So far my only issue / question is how make it so that a config file (such as ~/.config/i3/config which has no file format) to always open with my preferred syntax highlighting. As of now it always opens with ft:unknown, whereas I would like it to open with ft:shell. The set filetype shell command seems to only do it for the session I'm using here and now so that I'd have to do it manually next time I open it.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Version: 2.0.11
Commit hash: 225927b9
Compiled on August 09, 2022

[darac]

The solution that Emacs and Vi(m) have developed for this is to have a specially-formatted line in a header comment in the file.

So, if you use Emacs, you might have a header like:

// -*- mode: c -*-

In vim, that would be:

// vim: set ft=c :

I don't think it makes sense for micro to create it's own schema for this (there's a lot of files that already have these sort of things in the headers, and we don't necessarily need to start an arms war). But it would be nice if micro were able to read these headers and parse (maybe a limited subset) of the commands.

So, the basic pattern would be:

1. Open a filehandle
2. Read the first N lines of the file, or the first N characters of the file.
3. Parse these lines to look for Emacs and Vim commands (with some logic that determines which "wins" if both are present)
4. Apply the commands only to the newly opened file.

[taconi]

If the file has the comment #!/env sh at the beginning of the file the shell syxtax is used.

[dmaluka]

So far my only issue / question is how make it so that a config file (such as ~/.config/i3/config which has no file format) to always open with my preferred syntax highlighting. As of now it always opens with ft:unknown, whereas I would like it to open with ft:shell.

It should be easy: add this to settings.json (replace <username> with your username):

    "/home/<username>/.config/i3/config": {
        "filetype": "shell"
    },

Unfortunately it doesn't currently support the ~ notation in this case (it would be nice to implement it), so you need to specify the full path, not just ~/.config/i3/config.