Re: Font lock question

[Joost Kremers]

On Wed, Mar 17 2021, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> I have no trouble composing a regex that matches this entire thing.  I'd add 
>> a
>> shy group that includes an optional semicolon and that is repeated at least
>> once:
>>
>>     \[\(?:\(?1:.*?\)B\(?2:.*?\);?\)+\]
>>
>> However, this does not work for font-lock, it seems.
>
> Can you clarify what you mean by "doe snot work"?

Of course. :-) What I mean is that in my test case, e.g., with the following
text in the buffer:

    [aBc; aBc; aBc]

only the final `aBc` has the right font-lock faces applied to it. The first two
occurrences of `aBc` have no special face.

I'm testing with the following:

```
(font-lock-add-keywords nil
                        
'(("\\[\\(?:\\(?1:[[:alnum:]]*?\\)\\(?2:B\\)\\(?3:[[:alnum:]]*?\\)[;[:blank:]]*?\\)+\\]"
                           (1 font-lock-warning-face)
                           (2 font-lock-keyword-face)
                           (3 font-lock-warning-face))))
```

This correctly fontifies [aBc] but not the sequence above, [aBc; aBc; aBc].

TIA

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments