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Creating your own syntax files

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Tip 1561 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2008 · complexity intermediate · author Clearmoments · version 7.0

This is a tutorial showing how to create your own syntax files in Vim. This provides syntax highlighting to show the different elements of files that you use. In this tutorial, all file names matching a particular extension will use the highlighting rules defined with the syntax commands shown below.

Example: Celestia star catalogsEdit

This tutorial creates a syntax file for Celestia star catalogs. Celestia is a great program for anyone who likes astronomy and space. All we need to know for this tutorial is that a star catalog lists a star name with its positional information, distance and attributes (color, radius, mass, brightness). Here is an example entry in a star catalog file (.stc):

600000 "My Star"
  RA 24.406489
  Dec -9.404052
  SpectralType "Q"
  Mass 1.09
  AbsMag 1.29
  Distance 124.729260

The entry consists of a number, a string, and a {...} block, with some keywords within that block ("RA", "Dec", etc). Comments are prefixed with "#" like in shell scripts or conf files. There can be multiple entries like this with a number (the HIP number), the string, and the block containing the attributes. Celestia gets more complicated than this because you can have multiple stars going around a barycenter, but we will only cover stars.

Syntax filesEdit

Build a syntax fileEdit

First, create a new file named cel.vim with the following contents:

" Vim syntax file
" Language: Celestia Star Catalogs
" Maintainer: Kevin Lauder
" Latest Revision: 26 April 2008

if exists("b:current_syntax")

Vim comments start with a quote. Following the convention of the built-in syntax files, we start with a comment flower box. The test if exists("b:current_syntax") ... checks whether an earlier file has defined a syntax already. If so, the script exits with finish.

Keyword, match and region elementsEdit

There are three major syntax elements, and commands to describe those elements. In order to syntax highlight, we must be able to describe what to highlight. Here is an example of what they look like:

" Keywords
syn keyword syntaxElementKeyword keyword1 keyword2 nextgroup=syntaxElement2

" Matches
syn match syntaxElementMatch 'regexp' contains=syntaxElement1 nextgroup=syntaxElement2 skipwhite

" Regions
syn region syntaxElementRegion start='x' end='y'


Keywords are simple. Take for example the programming language BASIC. In BASIC there are several keywords like PRINT, OPEN and IF. To have Vim recognize them, you can use a definition:

syn keyword basicLanguageKeywords PRINT OPEN IF

For now we are not going to worry about nextgroup=.

Vim will now recognize the keywords PRINT, OPEN and IF as syntax elements of type basicLanguageKeywords. You can add more on the same line, or add another line with the same type (basicLanguageKeywords). For example, to add the keywords DO, WHILE and WEND, you could add to the previous line like this:

syn keyword basicLanguageKeywords PRINT OPEN IF DO WHILE WEND

or, add another line, like this:

syn keyword basicLanguageKeywords PRINT OPEN IF
syn keyword basicLanguageKeywords DO WHILE WEND

We will apply this procedure to our star catalog entry from above:

600000 "My Star"
  RA 24.406489
  Dec -9.404052
  SpectralType "Q"
  Mass 1.09
  AbsMag 1.29
  Distance 124.729260

We can group the following keywords as part of a syntax element called celBlockCmd by adding the following to our syntax file.

syn keyword celBlockCmd RA Dec SpectralType Mass Distance AbsMag

Vim will now recognize these keywords which may be sufficient for your purpose. However, what if we want to match the text following the keywords, like those numbers and string values?

Matches (and addendum to keywords)Edit

All this keyword stuff logically leads to matches. Take the above example once again. After the keywords ("RA", "Dec", "AbsMag" etc) there are numbers. We want Vim to know that following a certain keyword there is going to be some set of characters, perhaps defined as a regular expression.

This is where matches come in; along with an additional caveat to using keywords, the nextgroup and skipwhite arguments as seen above.

syn match celNumber '\d\+'
syn keyword celBlockCmd RA Dec Mass Distance AbsMag nextgroup=celNumber skipwhite

Now as you can see the match was given a regular expression \d\+ meaning to match one or more (\+) digits 0-9 (\d). The keyword syntax element celBlockCmd has been modified slightly because following the SpectralType keyword is not a number but a string. Hence it has been excluded from the list of keywords for now. Later we will address that problem by creating another regular expression to match strings and apply it to that keyword.

Notice the nextgroup argument. We are telling the editor to expect a celNumber after the keyword. So that is the first pattern the editor will attempt to match after finding one of those keywords.

The skipwhite argument simply tells the editor to expect some whitespace (spaces or tabs) between the keyword and the number.

One problem is that the above pattern (\d\+) will only match numbers like 1234, 93, and 0. It will not match numbers like 3.1416 or -1. To fix that, we need a more advanced regular expression borrowed from one of the existing Vim syntax files and slightly modified for our needs.

" Integer with - + or nothing in front
syn match celNumber '\d\+'
syn match celNumber '[-+]\d\+'

" Floating point number with decimal no E or e (+,-)
syn match celNumber '\d\+\.\d*'
syn match celNumber '[-+]\d\+\.\d*'

" Floating point like number with E and no decimal point (+,-)
syn match celNumber '[-+]\=\d[[:digit:]]*[eE][\-+]\=\d\+'
syn match celNumber '\d[[:digit:]]*[eE][\-+]\=\d\+'

" Floating point like number with E and decimal point (+,-)
syn match celNumber '[-+]\=\d[[:digit:]]*\.\d*[eE][\-+]\=\d\+'

We can keep creating more lines like syn match celNumber pattern to match all those patterns as one syntax element type (in this case celNumber).


Looking at the star catalog entry again shows another challenge:

600000 "My Star"
  RA 24.406489
  Dec -9.404052
  SpectralType "Q"
  Mass 1.09
  AbsMag 1.29
  Distance 124.729260

The first number is outside the brackets, and it's not really a number, it's an HIP catalog entry (more like a star's ID number rather than a value with physical meaning like mass or distance). The real numbers are the arguments to the keywords (like "RA" and "Dec"). It would be nice if we could have the editor match those differently than regular numbers. But, since celNumbers and HIPs consist of the digits 0-9 they conflict with one another. How can we fix that discrepancy?

Note that numbers with values exist only within brackets. Outside of the brackets it is an ID number rather than a value. We have to add another argument to the keyword and match definition blocks, and introduce another type of syntax element: a region.

First, we let the editor know that the keywords only exist within brackets. Second, we specify that celNumber syntax elements only exist within brackets. This is the concept of a region.

syn region celDescBlock start="{" end="}" fold transparent

The fold argument means that Vim can increase the fold count inside brackets so you can press Ctrl-F9 to expand and contract the code. The transparent is the important keyword here. It tells the editor to continue to apply matches and keywords to what is inside the region. Otherwise the region would not be colorized properly.

We must add another additional argument to finish off everything.

syn region celDescBlock start="{" end="}" fold transparent contains=celNumber,celBlockCmd

The contains argument tells the editor which syntax elements this region will contain. In this case keywords and numbers. But we have strings too, right? So let's implement the required syntax elements since we know all about keywords, matches and regions now. In addition we pickup another argument along the way, contained.

Let's define comments as a syntax element and see how contained works.

syn keyword celTodo contained TODO FIXME XXX NOTE
syn match celComment "#.*$" contains=celTodo

Comments start with a "#" and run until the end of line. So that's a simple regular expression '#.*$'. Starts with a "#" and match all characters until the end of a line.

contained tells the editor that the keyword is only valid when contained by another syntax element, in this case a celTodo is only treated as a separate syntax element when contained by celComment.

Bringing it togetherEdit

syn keyword celTodo contained TODO FIXME XXX NOTE
syn match celComment "#.*$" contains=celTodo

" Celestia Star Catalog Numbers

" Regular int like number with - + or nothing in front
syn match celNumber '\d\+' contained display
syn match celNumber '[-+]\d\+' contained display

syn match celNumber '\d\+\.\d*' contained display
syn match celNumber '[-+]\d\+\.\d*' contained display



syn region celString start='"' end='"' contained
syn region celDesc start='"' end='"'

syn match celHip '\d\{1,6}' nextgroup=celString
syn region celDescBlock start="{" end="}" fold transparent contains=ALLBUT,celHip,celString

syn keyword celBlockCmd RA Dec Distance AbsMag nextgroup=celNumber
syn keyword celBlockCmd SpectralType nextgroup=celDesc

Telling Vim how to highlight + final touchesEdit

We can now take the syntax elements and use the hi def link command to tell Vim how to highlight them.

Set the b:current_syntax variable to a name, for example, "cel". That name can be used to modify the Un/Commentify (F6/Shift-F6) script in Cream, for example to block comment-out lines with the new file type.

let b:current_syntax = "cel"

hi def link celTodo        Todo
hi def link celComment     Comment
hi def link celBlockCmd    Statement
hi def link celHip         Type
hi def link celString      Constant
hi def link celDesc        PreProc
hi def link celNumber      Constant

The hi def link command has different types of highlighting options that we need not consider. The ones used here are:

  • Todo: used for the todo comments (ones that have "TODO: something" in them)
  • Comment: indicates a code comment
  • Statement: a code statement like a for loop
  • Type: a user defined type generally
  • PreProc: a pre-processor statement like #include <stdio.h> in C
  • Constant: like a string or number in code

These of course are guidelines. In this example, there are no statements or pre-processor commands, however celBlockCmd has been set to use Statement highlighting, and celHip will use Type highlighting.

You can view more options in Vim with :help syntax

Install the syntax fileEdit

Save the file, then install it by copying the file to ~/.vim/syntax/cel.vim on Unix-based systems, or to $HOME/vimfiles/syntax/cel.vim on Windows systems.


:echo expand('~')
:echo expand('~/.vim/syntax/cel.vim')
:echo $HOME
:echo expand('$HOME/vimfiles/syntax/cel.vim')

Using the directory specified above means the syntax file will be available to you, but not to other users. If you want the syntax file to be available to all users, do not save the file under your home directory; instead, copy the file under your Vim system directory. The default for both Unix and Windows is that system-wide syntax files are placed in the $VIM/vimfiles/syntax directory (which you may need to create). You can see the full path name of the required file by entering the following in Vim:

:echo expand('$VIM/vimfiles/syntax/cel.vim')

Another procedure to show the base directories which can be used is to enter either of the following commands in Vim (the first displays the value of the 'runtimepath' option, and the second inserts that value into the current buffer):

:set runtimepath?
:put =&runtimepath

By default, the first item in runtimepath is the base directory for your personal Vim files, and the second item is the base directory for system-wide Vim files. Place the syntax subdirectory under either of these directories; doing that means your syntax file will not be overwritten when you next upgrade Vim. Do not use a directory containing the files distributed with Vim because that will be overwritten during an upgrade (in particular, do not use the $VIMRUNTIME directory).

Make Vim recognize the filetypeEdit

Now we have to make sure Vim knows how to interpret your file. There are a few methods to add filetype detection for files of this new type. See :help new-filetype for full details, but the basics are here.

Add a file in the ftdetect directoryEdit

This is probably the simplest method.

Simply create a file in ~/.vim/ftdetect with the same name as your syntax file, in this case ~/.vim/ftdetect/cel.vim. In this file place a single line to set the filetype on buffer read or creation:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.stc set filetype=cel

Note that this will override any previously detected filetype with the new filetype.

Add to filetype.vimEdit

Add filetype detection to filetype.vim: in this case the Vim script is named cel.vim so we use the filetype "cel".

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.stc setfiletype cel

Note the use of :setfiletype instead of set filetype=. This is so that Vim does not override any previously detected filetypes while running this script. Details :help :setfiletype.

Add to scripts.vimEdit

This method does not apply in our example case, but some filetypes can only be detected by examining buffer contents. For example, maybe you have a config file that is actually in XML format but does not have a normal file extension reflecting that, like *.xml. Details at :help new-filetype-scripts. Basically you just add tests using getline(), search(), etc. and use them to determine whether to set the filetype with :setfiletype.

See alsoEdit



  • Is Ctrl-F9 something to do with Cream?
  • The "Setup your filetype.vim file" section needs a bit more explanation since the linked tip is rather waffly and possibly incorrect (it refers to %USERPROFILE% on Windows).
    • Remove this todo, as the linked tip has been cleaned up, and the reference to %USERPROFILE% was removed in 2011? ---- Herb Wolfe (talk) 21:28, July 25, 2014 (UTC)
  • Make this easier to setup in vim itself. Perhaps add the file ces.vim to ~/.vim/syntax and have vim do the work required to make .ces files use the ces.vim syntax highlighting. Or maybe even add a commandline argument to vim such as vim HelloWorld.ces --use-syntax=~/.vim/syntax/ces.vim
    • I don't see either of these as being very feasible. Using your first suggestion, say for example with source files for C, which could have many possible file extensions, the user would have to make a copy of the syntax file for each one. Any changes, would then have to be duplicated in the other files. ---- Herb Wolfe (talk) 21:28, July 25, 2014 (UTC)
      • Please clean up these comments as you think. Perhaps all that is needed here is the comment about Ctrl-F9 because I have no idea where that key press comes from. JohnBeckett (talk) 06:13, July 28, 2014 (UTC)


I have removed the following advice for MacVim on Mac OS (but will keep this for a while as an explanation):

For MacVim, put the syntax file in directory /Applications/
To get there, right click MacVim in the Applications directory and "Show Package Contents".

While I have no knowledge of MacVim, I have found confirmation that the above is the directory containing Vim's syntax files (i.e. those distributed with Vim). It is always a mistake to make changes in a distribution directory because updating Vim may (and one day will) cause your changes to be lost. JohnBeckett 08:55, June 6, 2010 (UTC)


It would be nice to have a resulting TOhtml dump in this article

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