how to get emacs to treat a matplotlibrc as a sh-mode

Question

I'm trying to get emacs to treat a matplotlibrc file as sh-mode for reasonable syntax highlighting.

Adding these variations to my user.el fails to work:

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("*matplotlibrc'" . sh-mode))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("matplotlibrc'" . sh-mode))

Why?

Answer 1

I think you'll find that it works if you escape the single quote:

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("matplotlibrc\\'" . sh-mode))

From the manual :

\\' matches the empty string, but only at the end of the buffer or string being matched against.

And because it's Emacs Lisp, you need to double the backslash .