I found such text in many places of my Vim help. What is it and why?
vim:tw=78:fo=tcq2:isk=!-~,^*,^\|,^\":ts=8:ft=help:norl:
Google did not give anything - only incoherent pieces of the source.

    1 answer 1

    This is "modeline" . If such text is in the last or first two lines of the file, Vim reads the settings from there and applies to the current buffer.

    Example: Forced interpretation of a .rdf file as xml :

     <!-- vim: ft=xml --> <!-- rest of file -->