Highlight lines longer that 80 characters in vim in multiple tabs of the same file

Question

From these two questions:

Vim syntax coloring: How do I highlight long lines only?

I've extracted the following config for my .vimrc:

augroup vimrc_autocmds
 autocmd BufEnter * highlight OverLength ctermbg=darkred ctermfg=whitee guibg=#FFD9D9
 autocmd BufEnter * match OverLength /\%>80v.\+/
augroup END

This works fine for highlighting lines longer that 80 characters in vim, but when I open another tab of the same file using:

:tab split

the highlighting doesn't work in the new tab, only in the original one. How can I achieve the same effect for the new tab?

You can use another command like TabEnter similar to BufEnter. It will work — SibiCoder, Jun 12 '16 at 06:40
I'd just like to point out the we have a [website section specialised in vim questions](http://vi.stackexchange.com/). — grochmal, Jun 12 '16 at 17:08

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 12 '16 at 09:44

Here is a cleaned up version of your snippet:

highlight OverLength ctermbg=darkred ctermfg=white guibg=#FFD9D9

augroup vimrc_autocmds
    autocmd!
    autocmd BufEnter,WinEnter * call matchadd('OverLength', '\%>80v.\+', -1)
augroup END

The autocommands in that group are properly cleared when/if you reload your vimrc.
The BufEnter event is only triggered once, you need to listen to another event, WinEnter, which is triggered when a window gets the focus.
matchadd() is more flexible than :match and allows you to set the priority of the highlighting (useful if you rely on hlsearch).

Highlight lines longer that 80 characters in vim in multiple tabs of the same file

1 Answers1