How to properly escape a string in a vimrc file

Question

I am trying to add in a regex that matches either:

u'...'

or:

u"..."

To highlight the u before the string (it's a python thing).

This is what I have so far:

autocmd Syntax python syn match pythonUni       "\<\zsu\ze'" + '\|"'

Yet this gives me an invalid syntax when opening the python file. What would be the proper way to say ' or " in a vim regex?

I tested this out and the proper regex should be:

/\<\zsu\ze['"]

But I'm not sure how to put it in the quoted command above.

Answer 1

The argument to :syn match is not really a string, but a regex. Even though it's most often delimited by double quotes, you can use any other delimiters, such as slashes or pluses.

See :help :syn-pattern:

In the syntax commands, a pattern must be surrounded by two identical characters. This is like it works for the :s command. The most common to use is the double quote. But if the pattern contains a double quote, you can use another character that is not used in the pattern.

So in your case you can simply use:

syn match pythonUni /\<\zsu\ze['"]/

Or:

syn match pythonUni +\<\zsu\ze['"]+