Language specific custom syntax highlighting

Question

So I have to follow a name convention for my C data types :

Typedefs must start with a t_ prefix such a t_mytype.

Structs must start with a with an s_ prefix and so on for other data types.

So I added syn match cType /\(\s\|^\|(\)s_\w\+/ to my /usr/share/vim/vim81/syntax/c.vim file and it is working almost as intended except that when in front of a parenthesis, the parenthesis is also highlighted.

This is minor annoyance but I would very much like to know what I am doing wrong. What can I do to exclude that paenthesis from higlighting ?

Thanks in advance dear vimmers.

Answer 1

You can write language specific highlighting commands in a your_favorite_language.vim file in ~/.vim/after/syntax. In your case c.vim.

The reason for putting it there is that it will remain there across vim/distro updates.

For C, the command goes like this :

syn match cType /some_vim_regex_pattern/

The vim regex pattern for a word is \<word\>. That's a convenient abstraction because you don't have to care if you word has start of the line (\^), whitespace (\s), parentheses or any other non-word delimiter before/after it.

So in your case, you want :

syn match cType /\<t_\w\+\>/

If you want to know wore about vim's regular expressions here is a useful link : http://www.vimregex.com/