How to make vim apply /var/log/messages syntax highlighting to any file called "messages" or "messages-*"?

Question

I love vim's colorization of /var/log/messages, but it only works for that – the absolute filename. It doesn't work for older rotations of messages (e.g. /var/log/messages-20120610) or for messages files I get from other systems. How can I tweak this?

Solution

When you have the file open, you can run:

:set filetype=messages

To automate this for all files called messages, put the following into ~/.vim/ftdetect/messages.vim:

autocmd BufNewFile,BufReadPost *messages* :set filetype=messages

Comments

[rsaw]

BRILLIANT! I'll be using "messages*", but this is exactly what I wanted. I love it. Thank you so much.

[rsaw]

Thanks for responding chris. Didn't work for me.

[Stefan Majewsky]

chris, did you mean ftdetect.vim?

[stardiviner]

No, ~/.vim/ftdetect/ is a directory, ~/.vim/filetype.vim, all au BufNewfile,BufRead ... set ft=.. can put in this file. more simple.

[Volker Siegel]

Using that file is not advised. Vim docs say: :help new-filetype "... In any way, it's better not to modify the $VIMRUNTIME/filetype.vim file. It will be overwritten when installing a new version of Vim."

[stardiviner]

~/.vim/ is not $VIMRUNTIME system level. Will not be overwritten by new installed Vim.