vim: Force specific syntax via command-line argument

Question

When I want to easily read my PostgreSQL schema, I dump it to stderr and redirect it to vim:

pg_dump -h localhost -U postgres dog_food --schema-only | vim -

This gives:

vim does not have a syntax highlight schema, because it has no filename extension when reading from stdin, so I use the following:

:set syntax=sql

Which gives:

Being the lazy developer I am, I would like to force vim to use the SQL syntax by passing a command line argument, saving me the choir of re-typing set syntax=<whatever> every time I open it with stdin data..

Is there a way to set vim syntax by passing a command line argument?

Answer 1

You can use:

vim -c 'set syntax=sql' -

Answer 2

vim -R -c 'set ft=sql' -

• -R opens Vim in read-only mode. Your system may have the alias view for vim -R, but Neovim does not support it.
• set ft is short for set filetype. As Martin Tournoij mentioned in his comment, setting the file type sets the syntax and more.

Answer 3

You can even automate that by putting the command into your ~/.vimrc:

augroup filetype
  au! StdinReadPre * set filetype=sql
augroup END