Why can't this line correctly highlight all things between (* and *) as comments in vim?
syn region datsComment start="(\*" end="\*)" contains=datsComment,datsTodo
hi def link datsComment Comment
It does for me (in a fresh buffer without other syntax definitions). You probably have other syntax elements there that prevent a match.
You need to find out which syntax group causes that. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin. If you find other syntax groups obscuring the match, you probably should include them in the contains=datsComment,datsTodo,... part.
Related
I am making changes to an existing C code. If I just want to check my changes, I can easily use vimdiff for that, with old & modified files.
What I want is to limit some syntax highlighting to just the diff part.
Particularly I need to highlight TABS, but only those TABS contained within DiffAdd & DiffChange sections/regions.
What I tried:
syntax region TESTRGN start="TESTRGN_START" end="TESTRGN_END"
highlight TESTRGN ctermbg=lightgreen guibg=lightgreen
syntax match LeadingTabsInRegion display contained containedin=TESTRGN /^\( *\t\+\)\+/
highlight LeadingTabsInRegion ctermbg=darkred guibg=darkred
Above snippet highlights the leading TABS within TESTRGN & tabs in remaining file remain un-highlighted.
However, if I change TESTRGN to DiffAdd in the syntax match line, it does not work as I expected.
My understanding is that DiffAdd is not a region defined using syntax region ... & hence containedin=DiffAdd does not work.
So is there any method/work-around for doing what I am trying to do?
First, what's so bad about having the highlighting everywhere? The diff highlighting stands out well and therefore provides visible scope; couldn't you just ignore the highlighting elsewhere?
In Vim, syntax groups are defined and then linked to colors and attributes defined in highlight groups. The diff stuff uses the second part of that mechanism, but not the syntax part. Therefore, you unfortunately cannot refer to the diff regions within :syntax commands.
There's only a very ugly workaround for this: You have to determine the line numbers that have diff highlighting (via repeatedly stepping through the changes with the ]c motion, and/or using synID() to check for diff highlighting). With those line numbers, you can then define :syntax match commands with the special \%l atom that only matches certain lines. Of course, any addition / deletion of lines would invalidate your definitions, which would need to be frequently re-synchronized (triggered by :autocmd). That's a lot of effort vs. just ignoring the highlighting elsewhere.
Though you need to reset whenever the line was changed, this is just a tip for one of line number based ideas, you can get a list of all diff highlighted lines with:
let dl = filter(range(1, line('$')),
\'index([hlID("DiffChange"), hlID("DiffText"), hlID("DiffAdd")],
\diff_hlID(v:val, 1)) != -1')
And using this, it might be possible to set your TESTRGN with:
exec "syntax match TESTRGN /\\(" . join(map(dl, '"\\%" . v:val . "l"'), "\\|") . "\\).*/"
I want to leave my system's Python syntax highlighting mostly intact, but I have a specific pattern I'd like to highlight for an idiom I use a lot. How can I add additional highlighting instructions on top of the existing highlighting done by vim?
(Apologies if this has already been asked. All the vim syntax highlighting questions I found seemed to involve writing a new syntax highlighting from scratch.)
Put your additional :syntax commands into ~/.vim/after/syntax/python.vim, and they will be automatically executed after the original syntax script.
It's easy to highlight stuff that so far isn't parsed at all.
For elements already parsed / hightlighted, you need to find out by which syntax group (e.g. pythonFunction), and add a containedin=pythonFunction clause to your :syntax commands. Without that, the original matching will obscure yours. To find out which syntax group causes the highlighting. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin.
Introducing highlighting across (larger) elements that have multiple existing syntax groups is difficult, as your match will obscure the original ones, and that may break the entire parsing. You need to carefully examine the existing nested element structure, and try to fit in yours, again via contains= and containedin= clauses. Depending on the actual situation, that can be difficult.
For the actual syntax definitions, see the help starting at :h :syn-keyword. Basically, there are simple keyword definitions, regular expression matches, and regions defined by start and end patterns.
Am a hardware engineer and I use Embedded Ruby Language to simplify writing my hardware verilog/system verilog code. In my *.sv and *.v files, i have a lot of ERB variables starting with "__" (double underscore). E.g. <% __MEM_DEPTH = 64 %>. Is there any way by which I can make vim display the words starting with the double underscore in a different color?
You can extend the built-in syntax highlighting. For example, put the following into ~/.vim/after/syntax/verilog.vim:
syntax match verilogErbVar "\<__\w\+\>"
hi link verilogErbVar Identifier
This assumes that the corresponding text fragments aren't yet matched by the original syntax (in my short test, they weren't). Else, you need to find the syntax groups that contain them and add a containedin=... to the :syntax command.
To find out which syntax group causes the highlighting. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin.
Spell check in vim is nice enough to not highlight things inside of a math environment when writing LaTeX. This is convenient, but I make some very common typos like "theat" instead of "theta" that would be nice to catch automatically. Is there a way to get the words in the explicit list of 'bad words' to be highlighted regardless of their context?
Note that I still don't want to check whether everything is good within a math environment, just that it is not explicitly bad.
To enable spell checking for a syntax group, you'd have to add contains=#Spell, e.g. for the texStatement group, that would be:
:syn match texStatement "\\\a\+" contains=#Spell
But with that, you'd still have to add all "good" statements to your spell file. If you just want to highlight certain "bad" words, you can define a contained match:
:syn match texBadStatement "theat" containedin=texStatement
And then link to the error or bad spell highlighting:
:hi link texBadStatement SpellBad
Put those commands into ~/.vim/after/syntax/tex.vim to make them persistent.
I'm not a Latex specialist. If the texStatement group is wrong, you need to find out which syntax group causes the highlighting. :syn list shows all active groups, but it's easier when you install the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin.
VIM: Is it possible to change the color of these symbols:
~!%^&*()-+=[]{},.<>?:/;
like Visual Studio does?
The C/C++ syntaxes are defined in syntax/c.vim and syntax/cpp.vim. If you're using Linux, the main syntax directory is in /usr/share/vimXX/, where XX is the version (e.g. mine are in vim72). I don't know about installation directories on other OSes, but I'm sure you can find it. I'd suggest making a copy of these and placing them in your user vim directory (for example, in Linux, $HOME/.vim/syntax/c.vim and so on). You can then add whatever you like.
The C++ syntax sources the C syntax, so any symbols you want highlighted in both should go in c.vim, and anything for C++ only should be in cpp.vim.
To get syntax highlighting for specific symbols, you'll need to use a syntax match statement, something like:
syn match cUserSpecialCharacter display "[~!%^&*()-+=[\]{},.<>?:;]"
syn match cUserSpecialCharacter display "/[^*/]"me=e-1
syn match cUserSpecialCharacter display "/$"
I called it cUserSpecialCharacter since cCharacter and cSpecialCharacter are already used. The second and third matches are a bit of a kludge to highlight '/' without it matching comment prefixes, which would then override the comment highlighting and break everything. The "display" option tells Vim that it doesn't need to look for this match if it's not going to be displayed - see :help syn-display for an explanation if you like!
Once you've defined a syntax match, you can link it to a highlight group, for example:
hi def link cUserSpecialCharacter cCharacter
This will put it in with the already defined cCharacter group, so it'll get whatever highlighting that gets - in this case, Character. You can see a nice list of highlight groups at the bottom of c.vim for examples. If you really want, you can also hardcode a highlight by doing something like:
hi cUserSpecialCharacter term=reverse ctermfg=15 ctermbg=1 guifg=#ffffff guibg=#800000
(Arbitrary example - my current highlighting for the Error group.) See :help hi for more information on this, or simply :hi to see the list of defined highlighting - plenty of examples. I'd recommend against doing this, though, since it won't change with color schemes.
Yes, you need to edit the C color theme in vimfiles/colors/c.vim I don't know all the theme options one can use, but I'm sure they are documented on http://vim.org/