Syntax highlighting (how to do like emacs ?)

[Soo]

Hi all,
(I'm french, so excuse me for my english level :)
In emacs, when you write a syntax highlighting script you can do
something like this :
("[a-z]+[a-z0-9_]*" 0 (some-function) nil)
Indeed, when a syntax pattern matched (here "[a-z]+[a-z0-9_]*") you
can call a function (here "some-function") to handle this syntax item.
But how to do the same in Vim ?
something like :
highlight match some-group "[a-z]\+[a-z0-9_]*" call some-function
I search about it since very very long time, and i have no idea how to
do it

Thanks

[Ben Fritz]

Vim's syntax highlighting functionality does not support calling
functions upon a match.

You might be able to write a plugin that uses CursorHold or even
CursorMoved, and potentially InsertLeave as well, that would run a :g
command to call the desired function. However, such a method would
scale even worse than normal syntax highlighting. What do you desire
this feature for? I.e., what task are you trying to accomplish with
this feature? There might be a better way than calling a function in a
syntax script.

[Soo]

I have to write a syntax highligthing script for a new language. And
there is a great difficulty :
You have to recognize identifiers with this regex : "[a-z][a-z0-9_]*"
the difficulty resides in the fact that :
- You have two kind of identifiers : global and local
- All global identifiers have to be colored
- All local identifiers, and their occurences have NOT to be colored
- All global identifiers recognized within a function body have to be
colored *

There is an example written in this new language called Lisaac (http://
www.lisaac.org).
Please take care of comment to understand my problem :

Section Header

+ name := FILE_SYSTEM;

- copyright := "2003-2005 Jérome Boutet, 2003-2007 Benoit
Sonntag";

- comment := "File System manager for Unix.";

- external := `#include <unistd.h>`;

// In the above code "name", "copyright", "comment" and "external"
have to be colored

Section Inherit

// "parent_directory" has to be colored

+ parent_directory:DIRECTORY <-
(

// "cwd" and "result" have NOT to be colored because they are local
declaration
+ cwd:NATIVE_ARRAY(CHARACTER);
+ result:DIRECTORY;

// In the above code all occurences of "cwd" and "result" have NOT to
be colored because they have a local declaration
DIRECTORY.string_tmp.clear;
cwd := DIRECTORY.string_tmp.to_external;
`getcwd(@cwd,255)`;
DIRECTORY.string_tmp.from_external cwd;

result ?= DIRECTORY_UNIX.physical_get_entry
(DIRECTORY.string_tmp);
DIRECTORY.alias.put result to (result.path);
? {result != NULL};

// "parent_directory" have to be colored be cause it has a global
declaration in the above code
parent_directory := result // Parent is a data now!
);

So you see that all theses identifiers matches the regex but they have
or have not to be colored depending
on their declaration context
The use of a function like emacs permit us to handle each identifiers
differently depending on its context.
So i have no idea to achieve this feature !

[Charles Campbell]

Soo wrote:
> [snip]

> So you see that all theses identifiers matches the regex but they have
> or have not to be colored depending
> on their declaration context
> The use of a function like emacs permit us to handle each identifiers
> differently depending on its context.
> So i have no idea to achieve this feature !
>

There are some plugins that use ctags to build special syntax
highlighting rules.
As an example of one such, see Al Budden's script:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2646 .

Although you can't call a function based on a match, what you can do is
preprocess the file to extract the
global variable names and manipulate that list into syntax keywords.

Regards,
Chip Campbell

[Farzad Sehat]

2009/11/5 Charles Campbell <Charles.E...@nasa.gov>

The problem is that when using ctags and other a priori code analyses you cannot
color syntax item which are being written by the user at realtime.
Suppose the user open a new file and declare some new global identifier and then he uses
this identifier in the rest of the code. We cannot recognize it just by using ctags, isn't it ?

Regards
Farzad Sehat

[Charles Campbell]

Farzad Sehat wrote:
>
> The problem is that when using ctags and other a priori code analyses
> you cannot
> color syntax item which are being written by the user at realtime.
> Suppose the user open a new file and declare some new global
> identifier and then he uses
> this identifier in the rest of the code. We cannot recognize it just
> by using ctags, isn't it ?

Well, actually one can do so. Using autocmd events (CursorHold,
CursorMoved, CursorMovedI),
have vim modify the syntax recognition rules (perhaps using ctags,
perhaps something else).

Regards,
Chip Campbell