Re: Font lock question

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Wed, Mar 17 2021, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> But be aware that these approaches still won't work well if the [...]
>>> thing can span multiple lines.
>> Hmm, I'm afraid that is indeed possible. Perhaps I'll keep it simple and only
>> font-lock the `B` part, since it can't contain any spaces and is fairly easy to
>> do.
>
> Can there be [...] without any `aBc`s in them and which need to be
> font-lock differently?

There are. What I'm really trying to achieve is fontifying Pandoc-style
citations in Markdown files. There are several other Markdown elements that use
brackets, so perhaps Harald's suggestion to use the entire `[aBc` as an anchor
is probably less error-prone.

> If not (and if it shouldn't span too many lines), then I think
> a MATCH-ANCHORED that just matches on the opening "[" and then uses the
> PRE-MATCH-FORM to return the position of the matching "]" should work
> acceptably, as long as you use `font-lock-multiline`.

Even if they may occasionally span two lines, I assume citations will rarely
span more than that, so font-lock-multiline may be an option. (Esp. given that
`markdown-mode.el` does, as well.)

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments