Vimscript: how to get current filetype as a variable

Question

I'd like to get the current filetype as a variable in vimscript.

I'm making a function that grabs the current filetype and edits another file of corresponding filetype.

For example:

• editing "foo/bar.txt", want to open "tmp/other.txt"
• editing "foo/bar.cpp", want to open "tmp/other.cpp"

etc. I know that :set ft? displays the filetype in vim, but I'm not sure how to capture it and then open another file using it as part of the new file string.

Answer 1

You can access the value of a setting by prefixing it with an ampersand. To assign the filetype to a variable, the following are equivalent:

let my_filetype = &filetype let my_filetype = &ft 

So for your example, assuming the filetype of the current buffer has been set, you could do something like

execute 'edit tmp/other.' . &filetype 

Note that you need to execute the expression so that the variable is expanded before the strings are concatenated.