ACE Editor multiline regex

Question

I'm using ACE Editor to syntax highlight my website's BBCode system, and on the whole it's working well. The only thing that isn't is our equivalent to multiline comments:

[nobbcode]
    I am a demo of [b]BBCode[/b].
    Anything in here is shown as plain text, with code left intact,
    allowing people to show how it works.
[/nobbcode]

The rule for this is:

{
    token:[
        "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-open.xml",
        "meta.tag.tag-name.xml",
        "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-close.xml",
        "comment",
        "meta.tag.punctuation.end-tag-open.xml",
        "meta.tag.tag-name.xml",
        "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-close.xml"
    ],
    regex:/(\[)(nobbcode)(\])([\s\S]*?)(\[\/)(nobbcode)(\])/,
    caseInsensitive:true
},

And it works great in an example like this:

You can use [nobbcode][b]...[/b][/nobbcode] to designate bold text.

where the match is on a single line, but it doesn't seem to like multiline text.

Does ACE not support multi-line regex, and if so should I instead break it down into "start comment, comment, end comment" parts?

Maybe you already looked at this 2014 google group discussion, but, just in case... — Thomas Ayoub
Ah, so it's line-by-line? That would make sense. I find the official documentation very difficult to understand at times... If this is indeed the case, what would be the easiest way to implement the states here? Using push/pop or a separate state, for instance? — Niet the Dark Absol
I would use some isMultiLineComment to indicate the state I think... — Thomas Ayoub

Niet the Dark Absol Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-09T10:58:28

Thanks to @Thomas' comment, I learned that ACE parses line-by-line, and therefore multiline regexes will not work.

I fixed my issue with the following syntax rule:

{
    token:[
        "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-open.xml",
        "meta.tag.tag-name.xml",
        "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-close.xml"
    ],
    regex:/(\[)(nobbcode)(\])/,
    caseInsensitive:true,
    push:[
        {
            token:[
                "meta.tag.punctuation.end-tag-open.xml",
                "meta.tag.tag-name.xml",
                "meta.tag.punctuation.tag-close.xml"
            ],
            regex:/(\[\/)(nobbcode)(\])/,
            caseInsensitive:true,
            next:"pop"
        },
        {defaultToken:"comment"}
    ]
},

This essentially breaks it down into start-middle-end, applying the "comment" token to the middle part with defaultToken.

I just wish ACE were documented better...

ACE Editor multiline regex

1 Answers