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Suppose I would like to highlight text after // as comments, but shall stop after a }, for example:

Some Text **//Some Comments**

Some Text **//Some Comments}** More Text

What I prepared in my syntax file is

syn match                           MyComment  "\v\/\/.*(\}|$){-}"
hi def link                         MyComment  GruvboxGray

, where I used {-} try to match the shortest content, but it does not work, still, everything after // are matched as comments, not interrupted by a }.

Is there a way to define the shortest match?

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  • Your .* will gobble up everything. Try something like (untested): [^}]{-}
    – Friedrich
    Commented Jul 30 at 13:27
  • @Friedrich seems it's not working.... also, it shall be \} than } right?
    – athos
    Commented Jul 30 at 14:30
  • I don't think (even in \v mode) that you need to escape } here
    – D. Ben Knoble ♦
    Commented Jul 30 at 20:10
  • @D.BenKnoble mmm.. the \v "very magic" mode is a bit mysterious. I think in "very magic" mode, all ASCII characters except '0'-'9', 'a'-'z', 'A'-'Z' and '_' have a special meaning. However Friedrich's answer works without escaping }. But, if in syntax file I define syn match MyTest "\vxx\}" and syn match MyTest "\vyy}" , then hi def link MyTest GruvboxRed, then in vi only xx} will be red, yy} won't. I'm confused.
    – athos
    Commented Jul 30 at 21:18
  • AFAIK, only opening curlies need to be escaped depending on magicness and whether they start a multi or are a literal "{". Closing curlies can be escaped but the regex engine should be able to tell from the context.
    – Friedrich
    Commented Jul 31 at 5:33

1 Answer 1

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2

Your pattern is almost right, there's really just a little bit of confusion with multi and escapes.

In your pattern, you want to match two slashes followed by anything and terminated by a closing curly brace or a newline. You want the anything part to be non-greedy so you need to apply the non-greedy multi to it. The middle part of your pattern should be .{-}.

The OR statement to either match a closing curly brace or end of line is simply (}|$)

As a finishing note, you already cleverly use " to delimit your pattern and need not escape the slashes in it. See :help :syn-pattern.

Applying all this, your :syntax command becomes:

syn match MyComment "\v//.{-}(}|$)"

The same pattern without the very magic flag would have the same length. I'd favor this one because it's closer to the defaults:

syn match MyComment "//.\{-}(}\|$)"
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1
  • Thank you so much. it's nice to see a neat solution to a tricky issue.
    – athos
    Commented Jul 30 at 21:20

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