Is there a way, that each group in regexp can be highlighted with a different color.
For example, if I am searching for
\(text_part_1\)\|\(text_part_2\)
Can the text_part_1 be highlighted in one color and text_part_2 in another color?
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1Are you stuck on using Helm, here? If you are open to other possibilities, Icicles search does exactly what you are asking.– DrewDec 3, 2017 at 15:21
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Yes, I am open to other possibilities. The documentation screenshot shows exactly what I want. I will try it and close this. Thanks a lot.– Shankar RamakrishnanDec 3, 2017 at 16:43
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No need to close the question. You will no doubt get good answers, including about using Helm for this. I will add an answer that mentions Icicles support for it. And I imagine there are other approaches, with or without Helm.– DrewDec 3, 2017 at 18:11
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I edited my answer to mention that you can get the same kind of highlighting with Isearch+.– DrewDec 5, 2017 at 5:16
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1 Answer
If you use Isearch+, or if you use Icicles, then you can get this kind of regexp-group highlighting when you use Isearch or Icicles search, respectively.
For example, this screenshot shows highlighting for this input regexp:
(\([-a-z*]+\) *\((\(([-a-z]+ *\([^)]*\))\))\).*. It shows 4 levels of subgroup highlighting plus highlighting (level 0) of the full regexp match. (Up to 8 highlighting levels are possible.)
Whether to highlight regexp subgroups is controlled by option isearchp-highlight-regexp-group-levels-flag in Isearch and by option icicle-search-highlight-context-levels-flag in Icicles search.
In Isearch you can toggle regexp-group highlighting anytime while searching by hitting M-s h R. (In Isearch+ while searching, prefix key M-s h controls various kinds of highlighting.) Only the current search hit shows regexp-group highlighting, but the other search hits have their odd and even regexp groups highlighted differently, to easily distinguish them.
isearchp-highlight-regexp-group-levels-flagis a variable defined inisearch+.el.Its value is
tDocumentation:
Non-
nilmeans highlight 1-8 regexp group levels, within search hit.You can toggle this value using
M-s h Rduring Isearch.You can customize this variable.
icicle-search-highlight-context-levels-flagis a variable defined inicicles-opt.el.Its value is
tDocumentation:
Non-
nilmeans highlight up to 8 context levels, within the search context.Level highlighting is done only when this is non-
niland a subgroup is not used as the search context, that is, the context corresponds to the entire search regexp.Remember that you can use multi-command
icicle-toggle-option' anytime (**M-i M-i'** during completion) to toggle an option value.You can customize this variable.
The faces used for regexp-group highlighting in Icicles search are icicle-search-context-level-1 through icicle-search-context-level-8. In Isearch they are faces isearchp-regexp-level-1 through isearchp-regexp-level-8.