Re: how to enable syntax highlighting for some shell script files?

[Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk>]

xiaweitang <jadelightking@gmail.com> writes:

> My emacs does syntax highlighting for C++, latex files, and also .Xdefaults,
> .xinitrc and so on. However, it doesn't do for other files like .inputrc and
> /etc/conf.d/local.start.

Syntax highlighting is determined by what "major mode" emacs chooses
when it visits the file. For shell scripts starting with an interpreter
declaration like #!/bin/bash, emacs knows which major mode to use. For
random configuration files that are in no particular language, you might
want to use conf-mode.

To tell emacs what mode you want it to use for a particular file, you
could do either of the following:

1. Place a special comment in the file telling emacs what major mode to use.
   See the emacs manual:
   http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Specifying-File-Variables.html#Specifying-File-Variables

   or use info (place cursor after last parenthesis and press C-x C-e):
   (info "Emacs(Specifying File Variables)")

2. Configure the variable auto-mode-alist. For example, you could do this
   (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.inputrc\\'" . conf-mode))

Dan

> My local.start file :
>
> # This is a good place to load any misc programs
> # on startup (use &>/dev/null to hide output)
>
> # disable wlan0 LED blinking
> echo phy0assoc > `find /sys/devices/ -name iwl-phy0::assoc`/trigger
> &>/dev/null
>
> # from http://my.opera.com/xliot/blog/
> if ! test -p /lib/splash/cache/.splash; then
> rm /lib/splash/cache/.splash &>/dev/null
> mkfifo /lib/splash/cache/.splash
> fi