Was wondering if anyone knew of a way to go into the .emacs file and add an attribute to change the color of a specific string in all files it appears. The specific example I wish to use this for would be for any given file, if the string "TODO" exists, make the color of that text red. I want that string to stand out in my java, python, c++, etc. files so I can pick them out when easily looking around.
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1See the manual and wiki on adding font lock keywords. – Dan♦ Nov 21 '16 at 20:22
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What @Dan said. Use syntax-based (aka font-lock) highlighting, and add it via a mode hook. That will take care of any buffer in that mode. – Drew Nov 21 '16 at 21:15
A quick example would be this, which adds the font-lock-warning-face to all regex matches in all modes that derive from prog-mode:
(add-hook 'prog-mode-hook '(lambda ()
(font-lock-add-keywords
nil '(("\\<\\(FIX\\|TODO\\|FIXME\\|HACK\\|REFACTOR\\):" 1 font-lock-warning-face t)))))
Further reading with examples in the emacs wiki: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AddKeywords
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If the java-mode you use is derived from the prog-mode and calls the prog-mode-hook, then yes. Otherwise try to change the
'prog-mode-hookto'java-mode-hook. If thejava-modeis done well it should call this hook upon creation of thejava-modebuffer. – Arthur Andersen Nov 22 '16 at 15:38 -
Ok and the
'java-modeis something that comes standard in emacs or that's something I would have to implement myself? – Michael Nov 22 '16 at 15:43 -
Emacs comes with
java-mode-- if you just try opening a .java file it should be activated. Java mode does derive fromprog-modeso the suggestion should work fine for you. – glucas Dec 22 '16 at 16:44
If this is specifically about TODO-style comments, there are various packages available from MELPA that provide highlighting and related commands such as jumping to the next/previous such comment.
For example:
