VIM: simple steps to create syntax highlight file - for logfiles

There are three ways of defining syntax items (see :help :syn-define):

• Keywords: these are for items that are simple strings of keyword characters. This is the fastest matcher.
• Matches: these are regular expressions for matching.
• Regions: these are for long regions that are likely to contain other items.

There are various arguments that make things more complicated (to do with matches within regions etc), see :help :syn-arguments for a discussion of this.

There is a priority that comes into effect (see :help :syn-priority).

Colouring is controlled by the highlight command and is separate to the syntax commands.

A simple way to get started would be to use a match to detect the date and a keyword to detect error. Then use highlight to make the colours come to life:

" This creates a keyword ERROR and puts it in the highlight group called logError
:syn keyword logError ERROR
" This creates a match on the date and puts in the highlight group called logDate.  The
" nextgroup and skipwhite makes vim look for logTime after the match
:syn match logDate /^\d\{4}-\d\{2}-\d\{2}/ nextgroup=logTime skipwhite

" This creates a match on the time (but only if it follows the date)
:syn match logTime /\d\{2}:\d\{2}:\d\{2},\d\{3}/

" Now make them appear:
" Link just links logError to the colouring for error
hi link logError Error
" Def means default colour - colourschemes can override
hi def logDate guibg=yellow guifg=blue
hi def logTime guibg=green guifg=white

Bung all of that in ~/.vim/syntax/log.vim and make sure the file type is set properly (see :help filetype.txt) - it should then load automatically.

Hopefully that should give you something to get going with. Have a (very gradual) read of the various sections of :help syntax.txt and :help usr_44.txt for further info.

Try using Log4jHighlighter. The installation details are present on github.

You can start from

syn match group1 /^\d\+-\d\+-\d\+/ nextgroup=group2 skipwhite
syn match group2 /....../ nextgroup=group3 contained skipwhite
syn match group3 /....../ nextgroup=group4 contained skipwhite

hi link group1 Comment
hi link group2 Conditional
hi link group3 Identifier

and then just continue to experiment

To load automatically with *.log files you should make an ftplugin for this filetype.

For example, in my log.vim file in my .vim/ftplugin folder I have simple instructions for setting a keyboard shortcut when loading *.log files.

Note: ftplugins may not be the best way to do this... setting the syntax file as Al describes is probably better. I'll leave this answer here though for the alternative possibility.