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I'm writing a sml program (a weird functional programming language) and I'm alerting my .vimrc file. However, my changes don't seem to be taking effect to my files. I can make the changes to .vimrc and then go to my sml file and type (gg =G) to try to format, but the changes don't seem to be taking effect. For instance, I'm trying to change the size of an indent with the following lines:

set tabstop=150
set shiftwidth=150
set expandtab

and I'm trying to set the textwidth with set textwidth=20 (the 20 is just a test number).

Why isn't my .vimrc file working? I believe it's in the correct location (my ~ directory).

Here's my entire .vimrc file for your consideration.

" An example for a vimrc file.

" Maintainer:                                                                                                                                         Bram Moolenaar <Bram@vim.org>
" Last change:                                                                                                                                        2008 Dec 17
" To use it, copy it to
"     for Unix and OS/2:  ~/.vimrc
"                                                                                                                                                           for Amiga:  s:.vimrc
"  for MS-DOS and Win32:  $VIM\_vimrc
"                                                                                                                                                         for OpenVMS:  sys$login:.vimrc

" When started as "evim", evim.vim will already have done these settings.
if v:progname =~? "evim"

" Use Vim settings, rather than Vi settings (much better!).
" This must be first, because it changes other options as a side effect.
set nocompatible

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

" Andrew Patterson added these settings "
set tabstop=150
set shiftwidth=150
set expandtab
set clipboard=unnamed

if has("vms")
  set nobackup                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              " do not keep a backup file, use versions instead
  set backup                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                " keep a backup file
set history=50                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              " keep 50 lines of command line history
set ruler                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 " display incomplete commands
set incsearch                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               " do incremental searching

" For Win32 GUI: remove 't' flag from 'guioptions': no tearoff menu entries" let &guioptions = substitute(&guioptions, "t", "", "g")

" Don't use Ex mode, use Q for formatting
map Q gq

" CTRL-U in insert mode deletes a lot.  Use CTRL-G u to first break undo,
" so that you can undo CTRL-U after inserting a line break.
inoremap <C-U> <C-G>u<C-U>

" In many terminal emulators the mouse works just fine, thus enable it.
if has('mouse')

set mouse=a

" Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors
" Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.
  syntax on
  set hlsearch

" Only do this part when compiled with support for autocommands.
if has("autocmd")

  " Enable file type detection.
  " Use the default filetype settings, so that mail gets 'tw' set to 72,
  " 'cindent' is on in C files, etc.
  " Also load indent files, to automatically do language-dependent indenting.
  filetype plugin indent on

  " Put these in an autocmd group, so that we can delete them easily.
  augroup vimrcEx

  " For all files set 'textwidth' to 78 characters.
  set textwidth=20

  " When editing a file, always jump to the last known cursor position.
  " Don't do it when the position is invalid or when inside an event handler
  " (happens when dropping a file on gvim).
  " Also don't do it when the mark is in the first line, that is the default
  " position when opening a file.
  autocmd BufReadPost *
    \   exe "normal! g`\"" |
    \ endif

  augroup END


  set autoindent                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            " always set autoindenting on

endif " has("autocmd")

" Convenient command to see the difference between the current buffer and the
" file it was loaded from, thus the changes you made.
" Only define it when not defined already.
if !exists(":DiffOrig")
  command DiffOrig vert new | set bt=nofile | r # | 0d_ | diffthis
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              \ | wincmd p | diffthis
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2 Answers 2

Why are you setting tabstop and shiftwidth to 150? I seems unlikely that that's actually what you want. Try just doing :set by itself in normal mode from within vim to see if the values in your .vimrc are being loaded. You can also do :echo $MYVIMRC to make sure vim is looking in the right place. The action = takes depends on what the equalprg or indentexpr is, which is probably being changed by the sml specific vim settings loaded by filetype plugin indent on.

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150 is just some random test number that I was using to see if I I could see any changes. The :set command shows some of the changes being loaded but not others - therefore it probably means that the plugin is changing some settings. Do you know how to change the plugin settings? –  Nosrettap Jan 26 '13 at 2:04
150 as tab stop with 80 characters/line is radically out of range, it wouldn't surprise me if vim just ignored such patent nonsense. –  vonbrand Jan 26 '13 at 7:54

You need to reload your ~/.vimrc for your changes to take effect. This is done with:

:source ~/.vimrc

However, generally, when playing with settings, it's best to do work on the command-line as they take effect immediately and overwrite settings from filetype plugins:

:set option=value

You can add them to your ~/.vimrc when they satisfy your needs.

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