I'm trying to work an issue out... It's a smalltalk grammar for redline smalltalk. method start with either + or - to indicate class or instance then all of the following are examples of valid smalltalk methods string at: at:put: textually those would be something like - string - at: anIndex - at: anIndex put: aValue The current rule I have to match that is: method_definition = { begin = '^-|\+\s'; end = '$'; patterns = ( { match = '((\w+:?)(\s*\w+)?)'; captures = { 2 = { name = 'entity.name.function.instance.smalltalk'; }; 3 = { name = 'variable.parameter.method.smalltalk'; }; }; }, { include = '#language_elements'; }, ); }; The problem really are ones like at:put: Keyword methods with more than a single keyword. Textmate sees it not as at:put: But at: & put: Highlighting works great but the naming isn't correct. Can I mark at: anIndex put: aValue as the function then further say anIndex and aValue are method parameters? then transforming into just at:put: If that is a reasonable approach. What is the best way to match the variable number of keywords as a single run? I can get the one at a time in the above approach but I can't figure out a way to match all at once and still mark the individual method parameters.

The way to do this is by having a scope that matches the whole method "head" (`at: anIndex put: aValue`, say) and add that to the symbol list with a transformation removing the parameters. This is not generally a trivial task, but it can be done if you can either find a simpler matcher (usually a match instead of a begin/end pair) or a clean separator between a method's head and body (the "hard" way), or if you're fine without having separate scopes for method head, body and (complete) definition. In your example, if you can do without the `'#language_elements` inclusion you could try a matcher like ^([-+])\s+((\w+:?)(\s*\w+)?)+ to match the whole line at once and assign some scope to the 0 capture. I'll have to document the "hard" way properly some day, but the gist is you can match a construct of the form `X stuff Y more Z` with a pair of begin/end matchers for X and Z and then including nested begin/end matchers for X to Y and Y to Z using lots of lookaheads and -behinds. An example is included in my Maude grammar[1] as the `#operator` rule with a matcher for the whole operator construct and nested matchers for its range, domain and definition. Hope that helps anyway? 1: yeah language elements is left over from a previous attempt at something else that I need to return to. Not needed here. Should have clipped. I've managed to do... add to symbol list or highlight syntax correctly but not both at once. Perhaps there is an answer above and I missed it, but is there a way to: match entire thing and transform symbol <-- yes because i have done that but also have highlighting so that at: anIndex put: aValue has at: and put: marked as 'function' & anIndex and aValue marked as 'parameters' AND then remove at: & put: from the symbol list? I can do highlighting. I can do symbols. I can't figure out how to combine the 2 together.