Multiple matches for syntax highlighting in VIM

2
votes

I'm writing a syntax file to match a log format (basically column based; think syslog for a similar example), and I'm trying to set up a type of inheritance for columns.

I have two main goals with this.

First, I want to say that column 3 is the "component" field (let's say it's marked by a header; it could also be at a fixed position) and set the background to, say, Grey. I then want to say that component "foo" gets a foreground color of Red, and component "bar" gets a foreground color of Green, but they should inherit the background color of the "component" column. In this case, the field should really have two syntax matches; this also makes it easy to conceal the entire column (a la Toggling the concealed attribute for a syntax highlight in VIM)

Second, there's a field for levels; I want to set the background of the entire line for a critical level message to Red, but the foreground should be continue to be set via the normal highlighting (component, source, etc; I left off most of the other requirements).

From what I can see in the vim documentation, this doesn't seem possible. Am I missing something? Alternatively, can anyone suggest a good workaround?

Thanks

1
vim

1 Answers

1
votes

You can't (yet). For each character, Vim only uses one particular highlight group, determined by the last, "most inner" non-transparent syntax group match.

To work around this, you need to define a combined highlight group and corresponding :syntax commands. Some syntaxes (e.g. $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/html.vim, and various Wiki formats) use that for combining bold, italic and underline, but it gets tedious and repetitive after that.

There's a patch proposed that would add a combine modifier for :syntax commands; it's in Bram's Todo list.