I'm trying to create a syntax file for a config file format used internally
by our code - we use the files as GUI templates, so I spend a lot of time
editing the metadata. I've hacked existing syntax definitions before, but
I'm missing some of the subtleties of region matching. The syntax itself is
relatively simple, e.g.:
runtime_options
# this is a comment
.short_caption = Program runtime behavior
{
verbose = False
.type = bool
.short_caption = Verbose output
.expert_level = 0
}
Basically, it functions like XML but it's much easier to edit.
The metadata only has a few keywords (e.g. ".type", ".short_caption"), and
each attribute must be at the beginning of the line (ignoring spaces). So,
I can do this:
syn keyword confAttribute type short_caption expert_level
which works, or:
syn match confAttribute "^[\ *]\.[a-z][a-z0-9_]*[\ ]*="
which also works. But what I eventually want is to highlight the attribute,
and then have everything on the other side of the '=' be treated as a
string, whether or not it is enclosed in quotes. Nothing I've tried has
worked; if I try to define a string as a region starting with the pattern
above, the attribute loses its highlighting. The catch is that these
attribute names and '=' are not reserved, and can be used anywhere in a
string - it's the ordering of these elements that is important.
('contained' helped with some problems, but didn't entirely do what I
needed.)
Any suggestions? I'm sure Vim can deal with this, but I'm stumped, even
after looking at other syntax files for clues.
thanks,
Nat
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