New Parser/highlighter howto

["Richard F Weber" <rfweber@link.com>]

Jason Andrews wrote:

> Richard,
> 
> Good questions, I had the same ones when I created my own 
> Verilog parser.
> 
>> 1) How does the color highlighter exactly work for SN?  Does it use the 
>> parser to identify what is a comment, what is a function, etc?  Or do I 
>> have to code the syntax checking in separately (ala VIM)
> 
> 
> The colors are not at all related to the parser.
> You have to hook into snavigator/hyper/highlight.c and create
> your own flex .l  file to specify what keywords to highlight.
> I used ch_high.l as a template.
> 
> You also have to find and edit sninit.tcl to turn it on, this was the trick
> for me to get it working.

Hey, that was easy.  Now my ada code is color coded.  But I do have to 
ask why other languages aren't included for color-coding.  I mean adding 
support was _really_ easy (unless I really messed it up).  But this does 
raise another question below:

> 
>> 2) Testing parser offline.  Is there a way to test the parser offline to 
>> make sure the database is getting what I think it's getting? 
> 
> 
> Create a file with the list of files you want to parse and feed this
> to your parser. My verilog parser is named snvp so I run
> 
> % snvp -y files.f -p /bin/more
> 
> Now I can see what goes into the database and I can also debug
> easier using gdb

Thanks.  Now I can see the first line going into the DB, but it decides 
to stop parsing after that line.  I'm sure I'm just doing something 
stupid though.

After perusing through the lists, I saw that there is plans to have a 
new system to dynamically load the highlighters(ala .so's & .dll's).  So 
my question now is:

1) How is the new system going to be different with regards to the 
highlighter.  I wouldn't imagine too different, but...

2) How is the new system going to be different with regards to the parser. 

I'd hate to have to dump a lot of time into working on a 
parser/highlighter if the syntax is just going to change in a few months 
(that is when v5.0 is getting released. right?) 

Thanks for the help

--Rich