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I'm trying to use the following regex to match 'Capitalized' words:

"\l\@<!\<\u\w\+"

Which matches 'Main' and 'Canvas' in:

public class Main extends Canvas

Or another example, matches all occurrences of 'Bitmap':

public Bitmap b = new Bitmap(); And InputHandler in:

addKeyListener(new InputHandler())

This works fairly nice when used in search mode but not completely when using syntax match in a syntax file, where the command would be:

syntax match Capitalized "\l\@<!\<\u\w\+" This does not match anything that is inside parenthesis. Take one example from above:

addKeyListener(new InputHandler()) InputHandler is matched in search mode, but not from a syntax match command.

Am I missing something?

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  • Copied your example lines, and used your "syntax match..." (also copy-past). Added "hi def link Capitalized Error" to get some color. It works for me. Im using (g)vim 8.1.565.
    – Ralf
    Dec 10, 2018 at 4:57
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    I think the answer you seek is not about the regex matching, but about how syntax specifications work. I would guess that the problem is related to the use of contains and contained, in that the parantheses are matched by a syntax region command, and everything that can be matched inside the parantheses must be defined with properly defined containedin=.... Dec 10, 2018 at 8:01

1 Answer 1

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Thank you so very much @KarlYngveLervåg for pointing out :h :syn-containedin, it leaded me towards the solution:

syntax match Capitalized "\l\@<!\<\u\w\+" containedin=parenGroup

Where parenGroup in my case is a 'syntax region' that also contains the top cluster. More specifically the exact solution was (for java.vim):

syntax match Capitalized "\l\@<!\<\u\w\+" containedin=javaParenT

No need to define a new region or crazy parenthesis matching.

Note: If your parent region definition doesn't include the top cluster this might not work outside parenthesis!

Summarizing, vim syntax definitions has some gotchas!

Again , thanks!


Update! My previous solution would not match KeyEvent in:

if (input.keys[KeyEvent.VK_A])

Now changing the syntax specification to (java only!):

syntax match capitalInParen transparent matchgroup=javaParen start="(" end="\]\w\+)" contains=@javaTop
syntax match Capitalized "\l\@<!\<\u\w\+" containedin=capitalInParent

This is not perfect but still much better than the last one.

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