How do I make vim syntax highlight a whole line?

Question

I'd like to have vim highlight entire lines that match certain patterns. I can get all the text in a line to highlight (by doing syn match MyMatch "^.*text-to-match.*$"), but it always stops at the end of the text. I'd like to to continue to the end of the term, like highlighting CursorLine.

I've tried replacing $ with a \n^, hoping that would wrap it around. No change. (I didn't actually expect this would work, but there's no harm in trying.) I also tried adjusting the syn-pattern-offset (which I read about here: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html#:syn-pattern). Long story short, adding he=he-5 will highlight 5 fewer characters, but he=he+5 doesn't show any extra characters because there aren't characters to highlight.

This is my first attempt at making a vim syntax and I'm relatively new to vim. Please be gentle and include explanations.

Thanks!

(edit: Forgot to include, this is a multiline highlight. That probably increases the complexity a bit.)

Answer 1

It's not very adaptive as the filename (buffer) and line to full row highlight needs to be explicitly identified, but apparently the sign command can be used:

It is possible to highlight an entire line using the :sign mechanism.
An example can be found at :help sign-commands
In a nutshell:

:sign define wholeline linehl=ErrorMsg
:sign place 1 name=wholeline line=123 file=thisfile.txt

Obviously, you should pick a higlight group that changes the color of the background for the linehl argument.

source: Erik Falor, vim mailing list

Answer 2

From the documentation on syn-pattern:

The highlighted area will never be outside of the matched text.

I'd count myself surprised if you got this to work, but then again, Vim is always full of surprises.