Question

I am trying to create a new snippet to my snipMate plugin.

I work with some files called (i.e.) myfile.endfile

All .endfile files should have the same “snippet” like .html files.
So I did

cp html.snippet endfile.snippet

in my ~/.vim/snippets directory.

SnipMate is working with all present snippets, but not with my new created one.
Any suggestions for this problem?

(Btw: after creating the new .snippet file, I ran :helptags ~/.vim/doc command in an vim instance.)

Answer 1

It is because Snipmate works with filetype, which is a Vim option set when opening a file of a particular type.

For exemple, if you are opening, “index.html” the filetype is automatically set to html.

To see how it works, do :
:e $VIMRUNTIME/filetype.vim

As a preliminary test, you can :
1. open test.endfile
2. type :set ft=endfile or :set filetype=endfile
3. Check if your defined snippets now work

To do that automatically add the following in your .vimrc :
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.endfile set filetype=endfile

It means that every time you read or create a new file ending in endfilethe filetype option is set to endfile.

(The filetype is an arbitrary string it doesn’t have to be identical to the file extension)