File encoding other than utf-8

Question

There is a file that I have to use in iso-2022-jp encoding. I tried

:e ++enc=iso-2022-jp
:w

in the hope of converting the fileencodings to "iso-2022-jp" permanantly. But the next time I opened the file, vim responds to me

:se fenc?
fileencodings=utf-8

.

I have not written any curious things in my vimrc. Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Vim does not remember any settings. It starts afresh every time. It will read your initialization scripts (not just ~/.vimrc but ALL ~/.vim/* files) upon startup. If what you want isn't happening automatically, you'll need to do something to make it happen. I recommend using a filetype plugin.

Let's say your filetype is taro-enc. You should write a file: ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/taro-enc.vim with your vimscript (enc=iso-2022-jp). Now open the file and manually set the filetype :set filetype=taro-enc. Now your single file plugin should be sourced!

Well, almost. Perhaps you need to enable this feature. Make sure this is in your vimrc: :filetype plugin on.

And ok 1 more issue - this is manual! If you want to automatically detect your file as of filetype=taro-enc, then you can use your ~/..vim/filetype.vim file. (Mine is linked).

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Extra notes:

You can realistically put all of this stuff just inside your vimrc, but it's better to keep organized. Makes your code more semantic.

Btw, I recommend using full names of commands when communicating with people to avoid silly issues like fenc vs. fencs :)