Is there a way to set the text color of an ad-hoc selection in vimscript?
Something like:
" change the text color of the first three rows to red
:1,3 call changeTextColor('red')
1 Answer
As the link posted by @muru points out, it can be done, the following will highlight lines 3-5:
highlight FleetingFlashyFiretrucks ctermfg=red
match FleetingFlashyFiretrucks /\%>2l\%<6l/
However, the highlighting defined this way is tied to the line numbers, not to the contents of the file. If you delete or insert lines before the highlighted region the highlight will stay at lines 3-5, while the contents will move up or down. For this reason it's almost always better to find a pattern in the text to highlight, rather than a line range.
matchaddpos()? That allows you to highlight arbitrary areas of text.matchaddpos()has the same limitation asmatch, it was broken until recently, it has a horrendous syntax, and it can handle at most 8 lines. To highlight lines 3-5 you need to do it like this:call matchaddpos('FleetingFlashyFiretrucks', [[3], [4], [5]]). Really, it isn't one of Vim's best features.