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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:35:09+00:00

This is a follow-up from VIM: simple steps to create syntax highlight file –

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This is a follow-up from VIM: simple steps to create syntax highlight file – for logfiles

I am trying to use the ‘region-match’ facility to syntax-highlight stack-traces in some logfiles: these logfiles (log4j-based) look a bit like this:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:ss,SSSS...INFO...Message
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:ss,SSSS...INFO...Message
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:ss,SSSS...ERROR...Message
...stack trace...
...stack trace...
...blah blah, more server-vomit...
...
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:ss,SSSS...INFO...Message

So far I have managed to almost do what I want with this:

:syntax region error matchgroup=string start=/^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2} \d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}.* ERROR/    end=/^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2} \d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}/

But the issue, is that match goes too far. It includes the next record (ie, the match includes the next YYYY-MM-DD...).

I believe this VIM manual example for quoted text suggests that I should be able to highlight in-between, but I don’t seem to be able to map the syntax for my example.

So to be clear: I need to match the first YYYY-MM-DD... line that includes ERROR, and then all subsequent lines up to but not including the next YYYY-MM-DD line.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There are a lot of difficulties with overlapping regions in Vim’s syntax highlighting engine. The order in which matches and regions are defined makes a difference and it can be very hard to make it do what you want.

    The main thing I’d suggest is to look at :help syn-pattern-offset. This provides a means to make the region end at the start of a pattern among other things. For example if your end pattern is:

    end=/pattern/re=s-1

    Then the region will end at the character before the p of pattern.

    This takes a lot of playing around to make it work and I’m far from being an expert on these things, but to get you started, try this:

    syntax match logDate /^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2}/ containedin=logDateTimeTypeLine nextgroup=logTime skipwhite
syntax match logTime /\d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}/ containedin=logDateTimeTypeLine,logTrace
syntax match logDateTimeTypeLine /^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2} \d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}.*/
syntax region logTrace matchgroup=logErrorStartLine start=/^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2} \d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}.*ERROR.*/ms=s,rs=e+1 end=/^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2} \d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}/me=s-1,he=s-1,re=s-1
hi link logTrace Error
hi link logDateTimeTypeLine Keyword
hi link logDate String
hi link logTime Comment
hi logErrorStartLine guifg=red
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