title: Matching characters in first column
body: <p>I'm trying to write a custom syntax highlighting file (<em>.vim) and comments for the language are either a '.', '</em>', or '+' starting in the first column of the line.</p>
  
  <pre><code>.comment
  *comment
  +comment
    not a comment
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a way to match these types of comments?  I've tried</p>
  
  <pre><code>syn match myComment '(\s)@![.|*|+]*.*'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Basically, I tried testing for no whitespace, because I wanted to start in the first column, but it does not work that way.</p>