Re: syntax highlighting

[Christopher J. White]

>>>>> "paul" == Paul O'Donnell <odonnellp@rogers.com> writes:

paul> I am a little confused about syntax highlighting in emacs. When
paul> I open a file with *.c or *.html extensions and syntax
paul> highlighting is turned on I get the appropriate syntax
paul> highlighting.

paul> But what about bash script files? 

Highlighting is font-lock-mode, using keywords appropriate for the
type of file you are editing.  This depends on emacs properly
detecting the major-mode of the files you are editing.  To my
knowledge, emacs has the following methods of doing this automatically:

  1) Filename name matching via auto-mode-alist...when you
     open "blah.sh", emacs matches this against a pattern in
     auto-mode-alist and decides it's sh-mode.  sh-mode is
     activated and turns on font-lock-mode

  2) Interpreter name matching via interpreter-mode-alist...
     If first line of file is "#!", it looks for an interperter and
     assigns the mode that way.

  3) Presence of a line of the format:

     -*- mode: MODENAME -*-

     which must be present as the first nonblank line of the file.  See
     the info pages for Major Modes and Choosing Major modes for more info.

...cj

-- 
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 Christopher J. White                                    chris@grierwhite.com
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