How do I split long lines in a .vimrc file?

Question

I've got a line in my .vimrc that is more than 80 chars long:

autocmd FileType python set smartindent cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class,with 

I find this rather annoying, so I want to break it into multiple lines, but I don't know how to do that. I tried \ since that does the trick in Python and the Bourne shell, but apparently that's not valid syntax in Vim:

autocmd FileType python set smartindent \     cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class,with 

gives

E492: Not an editor command 

Can anyone tell me how to split this line?

(Bonus points if someone can tell me how to add to cinwords instead of resetting it entirely; the only thing I wanted to achieve is add the with keyword to it.)

Answer 1

Hit :help line-continuation.

Basically you have to add \ at the beginning of the continued line.

So instead of writing

autocmd FileType python set smartindent \     cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class,with 

you have to write

autocmd FileType python set smartindent        \ cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class,with