Interactive Highlighting by Matching
It is sometimes useful to highlight the strings that match a certain
regular expression. For example, you might wish to see all the
references to a certain variable in a program source file, or highlight
certain parts in a voluminous output of some program, or make certain
cliches stand out in an article.
Use the M-x hi-lock-mode command to turn on a minor mode that
allows you to specify regular expressions of the text to be
highlighted. Hi-lock mode works like Font Lock (see Font Lock),
except that it lets you specify explicitly what parts of text to
highlight. You control Hi-lock mode with these commands:
- C-x w h regexp <RET> face <RET>
- Highlight text that matches
regexp using face face (
highlight-regexp).
By using this command more than once, you can highlight various
parts of the text in different ways.
- C-x w r regexp <RET>
- Unhighlight regexp (
unhighlight-regexp). You must enter
one of the regular expressions currently specified for highlighting.
(You can use completion, or choose from a menu, to enter one of them
conveniently.)
- C-x w l regexp <RET> face <RET>
- Highlight entire lines containing a match for regexp, using face
face (
highlight-lines-matching-regexp).
- C-x w b
- Insert all the current highlighting regexp/face pairs into the buffer
at point, with comment delimiters to prevent them from changing your
program. This key binding runs the
hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns command.
These patterns will be read the next time you visit the file while
Hi-lock mode is enabled, or whenever you use the M-x
hi-lock-find-patterns command.
- C-x w i
- Re-read regexp/face pairs in the current buffer
(
hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns). The list of pairs is
found no matter where in the buffer it may be.
This command does nothing if the major mode is a member of the list
hi-lock-exclude-modes.
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