Hi!
I've noticed some problems with syntax highlighting in bat-mode. In addition, I have two improvement suggestions.
Problem 1:
bat-mode highlights variables surrounded by "%":s, as in "%alpha%". However, when the variable contains an underscore, as in "%alpha_beta%", only "alpha" is highlighted.
Problem 2:
Similarly, bat-mode highlights variables defined using "set". As with problem 1 above, it does not handle words with underscore. Concretely, in "set alpha_beta=value", only "alpha" is highlighted.
Problem 3:
bat-mode highlights keywords like "in". Unfortunately, it also highlights the word "in" when used as a file extension. For example "xxx
alpha.in".
Improvement suggestion 1:
In bat scripts, the command "echo" can be used to print strings to the console. Unlike in shell scripts, the argument to "echo" does not require quotes. It would be nice if Emacs would highlight anything after "echo" as a string (using font-lock-string-face).
Improvement suggestion 2:
In bat scripts, variable substitution is performed inside quoted strings, for example:
xxx "hello %alpha goodbye"
Unfortunately, emacs does not highlight this, which I hereby propose that it should.
I had plans to fix all of the above myself. Unfortunately, my Emacs todo-list is too long for my available time, so Richard S. suggested that I report this here, in case someone else would have more time than I do.
Anyway, problem 1 and 2 can probably be fixed by adapting a regexp. Problem 3 should easily be fixed by using a custom font-lock syntax table, where "." is seen as a word character, or possibly a symbol character. Improvement suggestion 1 could probably be handled by a simple rule matching echo + space + whatever and highlight "whatever" using font-lock-string-face. All of these are easy to fix.
Improvement suggestion 2 raises the bar to "medium", as it would require replacing the current rexexp rule with one written in elisp. The rule will need to use the "prepend" (not "t") override flag to add font-lock-variable-name-face to the variable name in top of the string face. However, the code must ensure that it does not do this for comments.
Side note: Typically, the "prepend" override flag is preferred over "t", as the end result will mix face properties from both the new and old faces. Concretely, I use a string face with a red foreground and a grey background. With the "prepend" flag, the variable name will be drawn using yellow from font-lock-variable-name-face but the background will still be grey, matching the rest of the string.
-- Anders Lindgren
In GNU Emacs 25.2.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0, NS appkit-1265.21 Version 10.9.5 (Build 13F1911))
Windowing system distributor 'Apple', version 10.3.1504
Configured using:
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