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Hello again. Recently my shadow wizard cast a shadow magic spell (pit of shades), and with the shadow attribute switched positions with another character. The shadow caster's unit was in combat at the time, and the caster was fighting.

My opponent told me that characters are not allowed to leave their unit, thus the shadow attribute will not save the caster from combat.

While reading up on the subject, indeed if a character is engaged, or can not move for some reason, then he can not leave a unit in the remaining moves section. However, that said, I pointed out that the rules for characters leaving units only covered either charging out of combat or walking out of a unit in the remaining moves section, and this spell attribute was an obvious exception; first its not the movement phase anymore, and second its a magic effect.

Was I right to insist that the shadow attribute lets a character swap places?

The specific allowance to trade places overrides any compulsion to stay in combat - in fact as you point out the compulsion to stay with the unit only prohibits leaving the unit "normally", so spells such as skitterleap would also work.

the specific rule of the spell over rides the general rule you cant leave combat.

You were right your opponent was wrong.