The ftplugin directory is for Vim plugin scripts that are only used for a specific filetype. All files ending in .vim in this directory and subdirectories will be sourced by Vim when it detects the filetype that matches the name of the file or subdirectory. For example, these are all loaded for the "c" filetype: c.vim c_extra.vim c/settings.vim Note that the "_" in "c_extra.vim" is required to separate the filetype name from the following arbitrary name. The filetype plugins are only loaded when the ":filetype plugin" command has been used. The default filetype plugin files contain settings that 95% of the users will want to use. They do not contain personal preferences, like the value of 'shiftwidth'. If you want to do additional settings, or overrule the default filetype plugin, you can create your own plugin file. See ":help ftplugin" in Vim.