Vim: matching html attribute names

Question

The following syntax rules:

" #f6266e
syntax match tagOperator "\v\<\/?\w+\s*[^>]*\>" contains=tagFunction,tagFunctionDefinition
hi def link tagOperator Operator

" #a6e22e
syntax match tagFunctionDefinition "\v\<" contained
syntax match tagFunctionDefinition "\v\>" contained
syntax match tagFunctionDefinition "\v/" contained
hi def link tagFunctionDefinition Function

produce this:

enter image description here

As you can see the html attributes names are highlighted as the html tags (each, onsubmit). So I added a syntax to fix that (turn them to blue):

" #66d9ef
syn keyword tagFunction var this
syn match tagFunction "/\v\<\/?\w+\s+\w+\/?>" contained
hi def link tagFunction Define

But nothing happens, the color stay the same. I even used contains and contained so I'm not sure what's the problem. Is the tagFunction regex wrong?

@JLILIAman the HTML attributes names in my example code each, onsubmit. — wyc
– wyc, Commented Feb 20, 2015 at 15:08

Ingo Karkat · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-20 15:09:21Z

2

Your pattern starts with a / (and also escapes the second / as \/, which isn't necessary); you probably forgot to remove those when copying from the search history:

syn match tagFunction "\v\<\/?\w+\s+\w+/?>" contained

You can easily verifying your patterns by first yanking the pattern yi", then assigning that to the search register :let @/ = @@. The n command will then jump to the next match and (with :set hlsearch) highlight all matches.

Further critique

Note that your tagOperator pattern is more general and includes (because of the [^>]* part) any tagFunction part. This ambiguity is dangerous, as now the correct matching depends on the ordering of the two :syntax commands. In this case, I think you can just make a tagAttribute contained in tagOperator, and define it roughly like this:

:syn match tagAttribute "\w\+={[^}]*}" contained

answered Feb 20, 2015 at 15:09

Ingo Karkat

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5 Comments

wyc Over a year ago

Thanks man. You've become my Vim hero. By the way I tried doing: tagAttribute "\w\+\s\+" to only highlight each, onsubmit. But the other words are also highlighted (e.g. item). I noticed you stopped using zs and ze after I included the contains. How can I do it to only highlight the attribute's names?

Ingo Karkat Over a year ago

Can there be multiple attributes (foo={bar} hi={ho})? Then, it's best to anchor the pattern to before the =: tagAttribute "\w\+\ze=". Your attempt will match (within tagOperator) all words followed by whitespace.

wyc Over a year ago

ha, you're right. I wrote something similar. Thanks again.

Ingo Karkat Over a year ago

Yeah, what a coincidence. It shows you're on the right way!

wyc Over a year ago

Yeah. Wow, I've learned a lot about regexs from you, more than in college. Thanks.

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