Use blank line as end for one region and as start of another

Question

I want to syntax highlight a header region in custom style and a body region with the existing markdown style:

Title: Test Note
Id: 147648d8-8680-4847-8f50-dd4a67f870b5
Created-At: 2018-02-26 22:44:20.784550+00:00
Updated-At: 2018-02-26 22:44:20.784550+00:00

# A heading
Some text

The common start and end of the regions Header and markdownBody is the blank line. I tried this:

syn match HeaderValue contained '.*$'
syn match HeaderKey contained '^.*:' nextgroup=HeaderValue

syn region Header start="\%^" end="\ze\n\n" transparent contains=HeaderKey

unlet! b:current_syntax
syn include @MARKDOWN syntax/markdown.vim
let b:current_syntax = "mystyle"

syn region MarkdownBody start="\n\n" end="\%$" contains=@MARKDOWN

hi def link HeaderKey Type
hi def link HeaderValue Comment

This works for the header, but not for the body. If I replace the two occurrences of \n\n with, e. g., END and replace the blank line in the text with END, it works, though.

This seems to mean there is a special handling of \n\n. How can I use a blank line as a start and end marker?

Answer 1

Ok, I found the solution: differently from what I assumed, syn region works line-oriented already, so a single \n instead of \n\n does it. Take a look at the working code if you’re interested.