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I've got the following obviously misspelled file:

bla blar blar

When I open it as "bla.txt" and run :setlocal spell vim rightly points out all three words as misspellings. However, if I mv the file to bla.js and open it again, turning on spelling does not highlight anything. It will select spelling mistakes inside of comments, however. Is there a way to enable spell checking of, say, string literals (or everything?)

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  • At a guess, the syntax for JS disabled spell checking in many of its syntax elements (usually comments are the only things that get spell checked in code) – D. Ben Knoble Oct 11 at 12:32
  • Where would one go to configure that? I notice that the help says: Files that use syntax highlighting can specify where spell checking should be done so there's got to be a way. – Eamonn M.R. Oct 11 at 12:49
  • Also, confirmed that it checks spelling in comments; will update question title. – Eamonn M.R. Oct 11 at 12:54
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$VIMRUNTIME/syntax/javascript.vim has some syntax items (specifically, the comments) which contains=@Spell. Therefore, if user sets both syntax on and set spell, only such items will be spell-checked, as explained in :h spell-syntax.

To override this you have to issue the command:

syntax spell toplevel

See :h syn-spell for more info.

Also note that simply deleting .vimrc leaves filetypes / syntax on, as Vim uses $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim in this case. So always run vim --clean when trying to check the true defaults.

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  • 2
    Eh, the js files dont set syntax on—users do. Minor nit though. – D. Ben Knoble Oct 11 at 13:37
  • @D.BenKnoble I stand corrected. – Matt Oct 11 at 14:26

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