How to force gvim to display All Files (*.*) in Edit File dialog box

Question

I am using gvim on Windows 7.

My question relates to the Edit File dialog box that appears when File->Open is selected from the gvim menu bar.

At the bottom right of the Edit File dialog box is a file types selector that allows filtering of the displayed files based on their extension. The default selected option is the extension matching the file in the current buffer. For example, if I have a '.xml' file open when I attempt to open another file, the default selected option is 'XML Files (*.xml)', so unless I change the selected option, I may only browse for XML files. Since I work on files having many different extensions, I find myself having to change the selected option almost every time I open a file.

I wish to change the default selected option of the file types selector to be 'All Files (*. *)'. Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

If you use File > Open, you're using Vim wrong. Use :edit, write your own mappings for custom locations, or use one of the various file finder plugins (FuzzyFinder, CtrlP, ...) found on vim.org.

That said, the file filter is set by some filetype plugins. To turn it off, the b:browsefilter variable needs to be cleared. To have this done automatically, put the following into your ~/.vimrc:

:autocmd FileType * unlet! b:browsefilter