Add module of manually highlighting several words?

[aidancz]

Contributing guidelines

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md
• I have read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Module(s)

new module

Description

I like to turn off the 'hlsearch' option, but I do need to highlight some strings to help me track variables

Different from syntax highlighting, this will make the highlighted part stand out more:

I am using this plugin: https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-mark
It works great, but it does not provide an operator, and I don’t like the default commands and keys, using vimscript makes it difficult to customize

Another plugin is https://github.com/pocco81/high-str.nvim
But it also does not provide an operator, and not using highlight groups is also a disadvantage

Are you interested in implementing this feature?

[echasnovski]

Thanks for the suggestion!

This indeed looks like an interesting functionality. One thing that makes me hesitant to adding this as a full module is that there is a built-in functionality that comes really close: :h :match. It can be used like :match MyHighlightGroup /\<buf_id\>/ to highlight in current window buf_id as a whole word with highlight group MyHighlightGroup. There are up to three such matches available (:2match and :3match).

The full "highlight based on motion/textobject" and "highlight visual selection" looks like a fairly small function wrapper away. If there is a need for more match highlights, there are matchadd() and matchdelete().

I'll think about it, but currently it looks like minor enough of a build on top of built-in functionality for users to include directly in the config.