mvim highlighting long text works sporadically

Question

I am using mvim. I have following lines in my vimrc .

"highlight text that goes over 80 columns
highlight OverLength ctermbg=red ctermfg=white guibg=#592929
match OverLength /\%81v.*/

Sometimes in my project I see the extra characters highlighted and sometimes I don't . I mean once vim is displaying extra characters then it will continue to display extra characters. However if I get out of vim and start vim instance it might not highlight extra characters. To fix that I type

match OverLength /\%81v.*/

I am puzzled by why it is happening. Is it possible that some plugin is messing with these settings?

Answer 1

It's possible that a plugin is undoing it by setting its own match. It's also possible that you're creating a new window. match is per-window (not per-buffer, and not global) so it only applies to the window that was active when the match command was executed.

You can try creating an autocmd to set up the match on new windows:

au! WinEnter match OverLength /\%81v.*/

Note that this is not executed on the first window.