[TxMt] Re: Python bundle syntax highlighting bug

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Aug 14, 2007, at 9:09 PM, Alex Ross wrote:

>> To be honest, I don't really like this idea too much (in lieu of  
>> having to use re.*(r" ... ") in order to get the regex highlight,  
>> let's say).
>>
>> While adding a (?#) is "harmless" in terms of the parsing of the  
>> actual code, changing your code to fit your text editor just  
>> doesn't "feel" right. More tangibly, I think it's probably "the  
>> wrong thing to do" if you're working on a project w/ other people  
>> (especially if they're not fellow TextMate users). The code won't  
>> break, but I could imagine that the extra line noise could tick  
>> people off and add some bit-rot to your version control ...
>
> I agree that prefixing all re's is not ideal.
>
> So, we have five options:
>
> 1. Match all raw strings unambiguously as regular expressions.  We  
> will sometimes have false-positives.
>
> 2. Match raw strings that are arguments to methods from the re  
> module.  We will sometimes not match raw strings that are regular  
> expressions, but can be pretty well guaranteed to never have a  
> false-positive.
>
> 3. Require some prefix to a raw string to "turn on" regular  
> expression matching.  This has an extremely high probability of  
> removing false-positives and false-negatives, but at the cost of  
> additional CRUFT.
>
> 4. A combination of 2. and 3.  Match raw strings that are arguments  
> to re.compile and raw strings prefixed with (?#) as regular  
> expressions, but no others.
>
> 5. Don't match re's at all.
>
> It would seem there is no perfect option.  I propose that we put it  
> to a vote, and perhaps appeal to our BDFL Allan.

I think option number 4 comes pretty darn close to perfect.

Then again, I don't write python, so my vote probably doesn't count  
much ;). But option 4 guarantees that, for most uses, things will me  
matched as expected, and for the other uses, there is a way to  
document what needs to be done. It also avoids to a good extent the  
bad case of having non-regexp raw strings colored as regexps.

> –Alex

Haris Skiadas
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Hanover College