Homepage: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs
Author: David M. Koppelman
Minor mode for interactive automatic highlighting
With the hi-lock commands text matching interactively entered
regexp's can be highlighted. For example, `M-x highlight-regexp
RET clearly RET RET' will highlight all occurrences of `clearly'
using a yellow background face. New occurrences of `clearly' will
be highlighted as they are typed. `M-x unhighlight-regexp RET'
will remove the highlighting. Any existing face can be used for
highlighting and a set of appropriate faces is provided. The
regexps can be written into the current buffer in a form that will
be recognized the next time the corresponding file is read (when
file patterns is turned on).
Applications:
In program source code highlight a variable to quickly see all
places it is modified or referenced:
M-x highlight-regexp RET ground_contact_switches_closed RET RET
In a shell or other buffer that is showing lots of program
output, highlight the parts of the output you're interested in:
M-x highlight-regexp RET Total execution time [0-9]+ RET hi-blue-b RET
In buffers displaying tables, highlight the lines you're interested in:
M-x highlight-lines-matching-regexp RET January 2000 RET hi-black-b RET
When writing text, highlight personal cliches. This can be
amusing.
M-x highlight-phrase RET as can be seen RET RET
Setup:
Put the following code in your init file. This turns on
hi-lock mode and adds a "Regexp Highlighting" entry
to the edit menu.
(global-hi-lock-mode 1)
To enable the use of patterns found in files (presumably placed
there by hi-lock) include the following in your init file:
(setq hi-lock-file-patterns-policy 'ask)
If you get tired of being asked each time a file is loaded replace
`ask' with a function that returns t if patterns should be read.
You might also want to bind the hi-lock commands to more
finger-friendly sequences:
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-z\C-h" 'highlight-lines-matching-regexp)
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-zi" 'hi-lock-find-patterns)
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-zh" 'highlight-regexp)
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-zp" 'highlight-phrase)
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-zr" 'unhighlight-regexp)
(define-key hi-lock-map "\C-zb" 'hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns))
See the documentation for hi-lock-mode `C-h f hi-lock-mode' for
additional instructions.
Sample file patterns:
Hi-lock: (("^;;; .*" (0 (quote hi-black-hb) t)))
Hi-lock: ( ("make-variable-buffer-\\(local\\)" (0 font-lock-keyword-face)(1 'italic append)))))
Hi-lock: end