Using colors in vim or gvim

In order to bring colors into a vim document, one must use syntax and highlight. The syntax defines what gets colored while highlight describes how it is colored.

Here are a few basic steps that show some minimal steps. As an example, we want to highlight the word pizza with a green background. So, we do a :highlight MYGREEN guibg=green. Then, we define the keyword pizza: :syntax keyword MYGREEN pizza Now, whenever the word pizza is typed, it gets a green background.

Of course, one cannot be satisfied with that because you probably want to color more generic words. The following example highlights four consecutive digits:

:highlight MYBOLD gui=bold

:syntax match /<d{4}>/ MYBOLD