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Is it possible to make ??? (3 question marks) a keyword, and highlight it?
I have tried the following in a syntax file. Other strings on the line are highlighted, but not ???. \?\?\? does not work either.
syntax keyword textTodos TODO ??? XXX LLL
highlight default link textTodos Todo
I would recommend to do it with a syntax match like this:
syntax match TQM '???' containedin=ALL
highlight link TQM Todo
If you want to have it always available, you could put the following in your vimrc:
augroup my_syntax_autocmd
autocmd!
autocmd Syntax * syntax match TQM '???' containedin=ALL | highlight link TQM Todo
augroup END
syntax keywords are supposed to be - well - keywords. Initially, this meant, it must match the definition of the 'iskeyword' option, which usually does not include the quotation mark. Some years later, the iskeyword option has been de-coupled from the syntax highlighting option and now one can use the :syn iskeyword command to specify the iskeyword option only for syntax highlighting (which falls back to the iskeyword) option, if it is not specified.
To make this possible, you can add the ? to the syntax definition of a keyword by using :syn iskeyword=<c-r>=&iskeyword<cr>,?
This uses the expression-register = to get the current value of the iskeyword option and adds the ? to it.
Note however, this can have unwanted consequences to your syntax highlighting, depending on the patterns used in the syntax definitions.
:syn matchfor the???entry instead, that should be the easiest solution.matchadd()and alike functions.