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Automatic selection: Behind the scenes

Emacs determines the major mode as follows:

1. First line²¹ is scanned for -*- mode: NAME -*- string.
2. File name is matched against ‘auto-mode-alist’ in ‘.dir-locals.el’.
3. Shebang (#!) is matched against ‘interpreter-mode-alist’.
4. Beginning of the buffer content is matched against ‘magic-mode-alist’.
5. File name is matched against ‘auto-mode-alist’.
6. Beginning of the buffer content is matched against ‘magic-fallback-mode-alist’.