Custom Vim HTML syntax

Question

I have a script that reads an HTML file and replaces occurrences of ~%foo%~ with a value set by Perl. Something like this:

<span class="~%classname%~">~%hi_mom%~</span>

Would produce something like this in the browser:

<span class="classyclass">Hello World</span>

Right so I want to use Vim syntax highlighting to distinguish the occurrences ~%foo%~ in the HTML. By default, the HTML syntax highlighting will make an HTML element's attribute values Magenta and I want the ~%foo%~ portion to be DarkMagenta. I'm on the right track because if I comment out the tokenQuoted lines (or token lines) I get the desired results but with both matches and highlights uncommented the token highlighting overrides the tokenQuoted highlighting.

syntax match token       containedin=ALLBUT,htmlString,htmlValue '\~%[^%]\+%\~'
syntax match tokenQuoted containedin=htmlString,htmlValue        '\~%[^%]\+%\~'
" tokenQuoted assumes htmlString/htmlValue (:highlight String) is Magenta
highlight token          term=none ctermfg=White       guifg=White
highlight tokenQuoted    term=none ctermfg=DarkMagenta guifg=DarkMagenta

The file I'm working in is sourced after the default html.vim is sourced via autocmd *.html ~/.vim/syntax/html.vim in .vimrc.

Answer 1

The problem is that token match is not being excluded from being contained in the tokenQuoted match. To get the desired results, i.e. highlighting quoted tokens different from non quoted tokens, use the following in your syntax file.

syntax match token       containedin=ALLBUT,htmlString,htmlValue,tokenQuoted '\~%[^%]\+%\~'
syntax match tokenQuoted containedin=htmlString,htmlValue        '\~%[^%]\+%\~'
highlight token          term=none ctermfg=White       guifg=White
highlight tokenQuoted    term=none ctermfg=DarkMagenta guifg=DarkMagenta

Or if it makes sense to use a syntax region rather than a match, replace the syntax match lines above with the following.

syntax region token       contained start=+\~%+ end=+%\~+ containedin=ALLBUT,htmlString,tokenQuoted
syntax region tokenQuoted contained start=+\~%+ end=+%\~+ containedin=htmlString   

I guess I should also mention that when I was testing this I just created the file ~/.vim/syntax/html.vim and added the above content. There was no need to add anything to my .vimrc file.