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How to use highlight feature of vim for debug.

1. Today I manged to find the cause of failure, which I tried to debug for a few days.
   To analyse the problem, I had printed debug messages from a few units: BFM, monitor and others.


2. The problem was that:
   
   1. The messages are mixed with many other messages of the same unit but from different instances all together in the very same simulation log file.
      
   2. The messages are intermixed with other ones, because each one of them happens in a different time.
      


3. A step by step procedure, on this page, suggests a nice way to fully take advantage of vim highlight feature to facilitate a complex debug case.
   
   
   1. Decide which are the messages, that you want to extract into separate debug log file. The new generated debug log file will be a sub-block of the entire simulation log.
      Than create a one-line-script, based on the command grep -e, to extract the messages:
      
      #!/bin/bash
      
      grep -e "TXUART RX_AGENT MON: crd U_DEC" -e "TXUART RX_AGENT MON: los_fsm" -e "TXUART RX_AGENT MON: sync_status TXUART.rx" -e "TXUART RX_AGENT MON: kword_err" spc.elog
      
   
   
   2. Next teach vim to color your debug log file. I use red for errors. I color green for okay messages such as in synchronization ones . And I use orange or yellow for start to move out of synchronization state messages.
      Some examples, first for vim color syntax, follow:
      
      syntax match kword_err /kword_err/
      hi kword_err guibg=red3 guifg=beige
      syntax match kerrT /kerr=T/
      hi kerrT guibg=red3 guifg=beige
      
      syntax match sync_state_a /STATE_A/
      hi sync_state_a guibg=white guifg=green
      syntax match sync_state_bd /STATE_[B-D]/
      hi sync_state_bd guibg=beige guifg=orange
      syntax match sync_state_e /STATE_E/
      hi sync_state_e guibg=white guifg=red
      syntax match sync_lost /SYNC_LOST/
      hi sync_lost guibg=white guifg=#992020
      
   
   
   3. If you use this debug rules frequently, as in my case, add it to .[g]vimrc file, to allow automatic coloring launch, based on file suffix (.elog in this case):
      
      au BufRead,BufNewFile   *.elog so ~/Junk/UART_DIR/queue.vim
      au BufRead,BufNewFile nc*.log  so ~/Junk/UART_DIR/queue.vim
      
   
   
   
   
   
   4. Below is a nice syntax set of rules to color a specman elog file. Red for errors, green for pass okay cases, orange for warnings and kinds of blue color for some progress messages:
      
      syntax match end_no_err /0 DUT errors/
      hi end_no_err guibg=green guifg=blue
      syntax match end_no_war /0 DUT warnings/
      hi end_no_war guibg=green guifg=blue
      
      syntax match end_some_war /[0-9]*[^0] DUT warnings/
      hi end_some_war guibg=orange guifg=blue
      
      syntax match end_some_err /[^0] DUT errors/
      hi end_some_err guibg=red guifg=blue
      syntax match end_some_err_2 /[^0]0 DUT errors/
      hi end_some_err_2 guibg=red guifg=blue
      
      syntax match end_normal /Normal stop/
      hi end_normal guibg=green guifg=blue
      
      
      syntax match fin_msg_1 /FINISH_TEST[ a-zA-Z_0-9]*/
      hi fin_msg_1 guibg=blue guifg=white
      
      syntax match any_war /[Ww][Aa][Rr][Nn][Ii][Nn][Gg]/
      hi any_war guibg=orange guifg=brown
      
      
      
      syntax match sbd_1 /SCOREBOARD/
      hi sbd_1 guibg=lightblue guifg=black
      syntax match sbd_exp /Expected: [0-9a-fA-F]*/
      hi sbd_exp guibg=lightblue guifg=black
      syntax match sbd_col /Collected: [0-9a-fA-F]*/
      hi sbd_col guibg=lightblue guifg=black
      syntax match sbd_just /Justified as dropped: [0-9a-fA-F]*/
      hi sbd_just guibg=lightblue guifg=yellow
      
      syntax match sbd_main /[A-Za-z0-9_ \s\t]*main_scoreboard/
      hi sbd_main guibg=lightblue guifg=orange
      
      
      syntax match obj_1 /TEST.*objection/
      hi obj_1 guibg=lightblue guifg=brown
      
      
      
      syntax match csr_acc /CSR access/
      hi csr_acc guibg=lightblue guifg=black
      
      
      syntax match phase_1 /[A-Z0-9_]* phase [a-z0-9_]*/
      hi phase_1 guibg=yellow guifg=brown
      
      
      syntax match seed /test .seed=.*[0-9]*/
      hi seed guibg=yellow guifg=brown
      
      
      
      syntax match enabled /[A-Za-z0-9_]*[ \s\t]*enabled/
      hi enabled guibg=yellow guifg=green
      
   
   
   5. To highlight a pattern between multiple lines:
      /^Error\_.\{-}\.\.\.
      In this example, the first line starts with Error and on the last line at end we have "...".
   
   

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