Highlight non ascii characters

[Peter Nguyen]

Hi,

I have a twig (PHP HTML template) file with several non ascii characters at different places. I can do a search with:

/[\x7f-\xff]/

and it will match them. But when I try to add these commands to my .vimrc file for highlighting them, it does not work:

" Find non ASCII chars and highlight them
syn match nonascii "[\x7f-\xff]"
hi nonascii guibg=Red ctermbg=2

Anyone who knows what I'm doing wrong?

[Niklas Lindström]

Hi Peter,

Declaring syntax rules in the .vimrc will not work, since the syntax will be cleared during vim startup (or something to that effect).

For your case, you can either add something like this to your .vimrc:

    match ErrorMsg "[\x7f-\xff]"

Or add your original commands to a file called ~/.vim/after/syntax/php.vim in your home directory (create it and any needed parent directories if they don't already exist). The "after" folder is a nice way to customize things locally according to your needs. That file specifically will extend the php syntax for you.

See also e.g. <http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_unwanted_spaces>.

H.T.H.

Cheers,
Niklas

 

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[Peter Nguyen]

Hi Niklas,

thanks for your answer. The match ErrorMsg "[\x7f-\xff]" works but only on the current file (.vimrc) after I source it. If I check the other file (twig) it didn't highlight the non-ascii characters. I haven't tried your suggestion with the "after" folder yet because I would want that non-ascii characters to be highlighted in all files, not just for php syntax. Is it possible?

[Niklas Lindström]

Hello,

Oh, right. It seems you need to trigger this for each window, so you can do either:

    au BufWinEnter * match ErrorMsg "[\x7f-\xff]"

Or perhaps better (to play nicer with other things adding matches):

    au BufWinEnter * let w:matchnonascii=matchadd('ErrorMsg', "[\x7f-\xff]", -1)

See e.g. <http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/VimTip810> for details. (Or :help :match / :help matchadd())

[Peter Nguyen]

Thanks for your help! It works as expected now. Now I just need to figure out how to highlight invisble characters that are not ascii and skip the other visible unicode characters (such as the Swedish åäö) as it is. That's another thread though.