PatternGroup takes precedence over ChildState

SyntaxEditor for Windows Forms Forum

Posted 18 years ago by Eben Roux
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Hello,

Using the supplied VBDotNet and CSharp language definition files I aim to add a template parsing ASP style code state; much like CodeSmith.

I added this CodeState as a child state to the default state and the StringState and CommentState. My problem is that when one is in the StringState it works fine if the CodeState start tag (<%) is directly after the quote or escaped quotes. As soon as I type any other character it goes tot eh StringDefaultToken2 pattern group token.

How can I convince the language to enter my CodeState instead.

Regards,
Eben

p.s. The SyntaxEditor is a really nifty tool and is helping me tremendously :)

Comments (1)

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA
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Hi Eben,

It is a greedy parser so that means that once it starts matching a pattern, it will continue until a stop condition is met. What I suspect is that your internal string patterns encompass the &lt; character, therefore meaning that the parser never stops at that point to try and match a new pattern, which would make your CodeState start tag get picked up. So you might want to exclude the &lt; character from your internal string pattern and let the state's default pick it up if a CodeState start tag is not found there.

Our sample app is great for debugging custom languages. You can browse to open a language and then when you move the caret over a character, in the status bar it gives you information about what the parser has parsed for the Token under the caret. If a Token begins on a character, an asterisk (*) will appear there too. That's very helpful since in this case you want to see an asterisk at the &lt; character if you have your language set up correctly.


Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.0) was released 1 month ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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