I realize that this question has been posed before on this forum, but I didn't find an answer so here goes..
In Vim, is there a way to enable on-the-fly highlighting for all matches when searching?
If I enable incsearch and type "/something" it will highlight the first match only. If I enable hlsearch and type "/something", nothing happens until I press enter (it only highlights the previous search).
In emacs the first match will be highlighted, and (after a slight delay) all other matches on the screen are highlighted in a different color, giving almost instant feedback when scanning for matches in a piece of code.
use the n-search feature of easy-motion , it does exactly what you need(look in the gif demo)
BONUS: it also dims down the background for you that really makes searching easy
https://github.com/Lokaltog/vim-easymotion#n-character-search-motion
You can do this with the incsearch.vim plugin:
You need to first install the plugin and bind <Over>(incsearch-...).
You are looking for :set incsearch together with hlsearch. However all hits will have the same color.
Related
I am running vim 7.3 on several machines. By default MatchParen is enabled on all of my instances. Using gvim on my windows machine, it is doing exactly what I want - when my cursor is on a bracket, paren, etc. it visually highlights the match. It does not affect cursor navigation. However, on my Ubuntu boxes, when I move the cursor onto the character, it actually jumps to the match.
I'm sure that the behavior is caused by MatchParens because if I do a :NoMatchParen, it stops. Unfortunately, I also don't get the highlighting at that point. I can't figure out where my settings differ, though.
I'll like you even more if you can point me towards a plugin that will always highlight the closest enclosing pair of characters around my current position (like a code oriented version of MatchTagsAlways)
When showmatch is set, the cursor is actually jumping, and the following line fixes the problem:
set matchtime=0
More details:
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'matchtime'
Just like FDinoff said in the accepted answer, this is probably only a problem of colors.
So if the color of the matching "paren" disorients you, tweaking colors of background and foreground is likely the solution.
But HOW do you do this?? ^^
I've had quite a journey through the vimdoc (it was not easy).
I've tested a whole bunch of variables and found that the relevant tweak is the [hi]ghlight command and specifically the MatchParen group.
The solution
Adding this in my .vimrc did the trick:
hi MatchParen ctermfg=208 ctermbg=bg
Note that vim config files are read from top to bottom, and some types of "words" are matched by several options. For example, a boolean could also be a keyword. Thus you have to pay attention to the order of these options.
How does this work?
My problem was that the background had the flashy color while the foreground had the color of the background of my terminal, which made it really confusing. Thus switching colors was the solution for me. But maybe you will have to tweak it differently.
First, you can check the current value for highlight MatchParen by entering the following command (while inside vim, in normal mode):
:hi MatchParen
You'll see hi MatchParen followed by XXX in the current style, followed by a list of argument=value separated by spaces.
The important arguments are ctermfg and ctermbg for the "terminal" vim, guifg and guibg for the "gui" vim. (Where fg means foreground and bg means background)
You can change a value and see the result in real time. Just put your cursor over a match character and enter the following command:
:hi MatchParen SomeArgument=SomeValue
This will not be saved, so don't worry. When you find a proper combination of values, you can add them in your .vimrc as shown above.
Personally, I set ctermfg to 208 (orange color) and ctermbg to bg (a keyword for the current background color, if known by vim).
If you use vim in a gui, take a look here for the available choice of colors.
The cursor isn't jumping. The color scheme probably has defined bad colors for the MatchParen highlight group which makes it look like the cursor is jumping.
Running default gVim (v7.4.461) without any configuration (i.e. no .vim files) in openSUSE 13.2 Legacy 32 Bit, :set showmatch? reveals that showmatch is on at start, which is not Vim's stated default behaviour. We can account for this by adding :set noshowmatch in our .vimrc.
I have this in my .vimrc:
highlight ColorColumn ctermbg=234 guibg=#2c2d27
let &colorcolumn=join(range(81,999),",")
When I search for words that fall into this range, the background color for the word does not show up. How do I fix this?
Unfortunately, you can't. The priorities of search highlighting and hlsearch are fixed, you can only specify the priority when using matchadd(), but even with a high number there, I wasn't able to override the 'colorcolumn'. It appears that this is completely separate (like syntax highlighting), and cannot be overruled.
Anyway, the colorcolumn is meant to be a single (or multiple few) columns, not the broad area you've created with your range() trick. So in a way, you're suffering under your own cleverness: You've misused a built-in feature, and now complain about the side effects.
So, move back to a single colorcolumn, or use the emulation used in older Vim versions, matchadd() with a low priority:
:call matchadd('ColorColumn', '\%>80v', -10)
When I work in a fast paced with vim, one of the recurring annoyance is highlighting of {} or {} or []. When the parenthesis or brackets are adjacent to each other, it takes me a second (yes a whole second!) to figure out where the focus is. I do not like having to rely on the blinking and I still want the matching paren/bracket to be highlighted. So how can I remove just the highlighting for the current paren/bracket?
:hi MatchParen ctermbg=black guibg=black
show match is ok, but the highlight was driving me nutz. The above turns the highight black so you don't see it when editor has a black background
:NoMatchParen
type :help matchparen for more help on this .
this functionnality is really useful for me, so maybe you can look at the doc a little and find a way to hightlight the matching pair in a different color (or just underline it for example)
What you are looking is
set noshowmatch
to be set in vimrc
In latex files I have the on-fly spelling switched so you can imagine that together with the syntax highlighting there is already a lot of colors in the terminal screen. When in such environment I am running a string replacement, say with :%s/x/y/gc I need a lot of time to identify where the string-to-be-replaced is located in all this color mess. Is it possible to make vim's current selection blink?
You change the highlighting of the to-be-replaced text with highlight IncSearch.
For example,
:highlight IncSearch ctermfg=Red guifg=Red
highlights the text with a red background (despite it being fg not bg).
However, I don't think there's any way to make it blink (and are you sure you really want that?). You might be able to use italics or underlines instead. See :h highlight for the options that are available.
I have a problem with search highlighting in vim. I have used it before but currently it does not work at all.
I have entered :set hlsearch, which is also in my .vimrc file.
I have entered :set hlsearch? and the result is hlsearch, indicating that I have successfully turned the option on. (right?)
I am running vim and not vi, so that is not the problem.
I have searched around but only found people asking about turning OFF search highlighting.
I would appreciate any input as this has been driving me nuts. Thanks!
Edit: highlighting also doesn't work for spellcheck, so evidently it's something global about highlighting.
When you have problems with multiple highlightings (like search and spell in your case), first check the defined highlightings with
:hi
If any groups are wrong or off, check your :colorscheme, and maybe try another.
In the console, color problems are often related to the number of available colors, a hairy problem. Check with
:set t_Co?
Another good tool for checking problems with individual syntax items is the SyntaxAttr.vim - Show syntax highlighting attributes of character under cursor plugin.