xyntax/README.md

# xyntax

xyntax -- Xolatile-style "header-only" library for syntax definition control.

- Primary focus of this library is for syntax highlighting, hence the name, but it can do more...
- Important note: Regular expressions are more robust, this is simple solution for simple problems.
- Everything related to my libraries is clean of all warning options on Clang, GCC and Valgrind.

Compile:

```bash
sh compile.sh
```

Install:

```bash
$ sudo sh install.sh
```

Usage:

```c
#include <xolatile/xyntax.h> /* Or: */
#include <xolatile/xyntax.c> /* Instead of '#define BLA_BLA_IMPLEMENTATION' if you want to compile it all together. */
...
int symbols = syntax_define (true, false, ".,:;<=>+-*/%!&~^?|()[]{}", "", '\0', 0, 0);
/* Variable 'symbols' will become the index of current 'syntax_count', and you can use it to count elements or select them without null-termination. */
...
int select = syntax_select (& buffer [offset], & length);
/* Variable 'select' will become the index of syntax rule you defined previously, or 'syntax_count' if there is no match. */
/* It's important to note that for performance reasons I'm not returning a string or structure, but index and length of the token. */
```

It can be used for:
- syntax highlighting in terminal or graphical text editors...
- source code processing, parsing, tokenization...
- counting source code elements such as keywords, literals, brackets...

For example, your can define simple ANSI C syntax highlight like this:

```c
char * separators = ".,:;<=>+-*/%!&~^?|()[]{}'\" \t\r\n";

char * keywords [] = {
	"register",         "volatile",         "auto",             "const",
	"static",           "extern",           "if",               "else",
	"do",               "while",            "for",              "continue",
	"switch",           "case",             "default",          "break",
	"enum",             "union",            "struct",           "typedef",
	"goto",             "void",             "return",           "sizeof",
	"char",             "short",            "int",              "long",
	"signed",           "unsigned",         "float",            "double"
};

int word;

syntax_define (false, false, "/*", "*/", '\0', colour_grey,   effect_bold);
syntax_define (false, false, "//", "\n", '\0', colour_grey,   effect_bold);
syntax_define (false, false, "#",  "\n", '\\', colour_yellow, effect_italic);
syntax_define (false, false, "'",  "'",  '\\', colour_pink,   effect_bold);
syntax_define (false, false, "\"", "\"", '\\', colour_pink,   effect_normal);

for (word = 0; word != (int) (sizeof (keywords) / sizeof (keywords [0])); ++word) {
	syntax_define (false, true, keywords [word], separators, '\0', colour_yellow, effect_bold);
}

syntax_define (true, false, "()[]{}",             "", '\0', colour_blue, effect_normal);
syntax_define (true, false, ".,:;<=>+*-/%!&~^?|", "", '\0', colour_cyan, effect_normal);

syntax_define (true, true, "0123456789",                 separators, '\0', colour_pink,  effect_bold);
syntax_define (true, true, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", separators, '\0', colour_white, effect_normal);
syntax_define (true, true, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ", separators, '\0', colour_white, effect_bold);
syntax_define (true, true, "_",                          separators, '\0', colour_white, effect_italic);
```

If you want to do parsing, counting, tokenization, you can use return value of 'syntax_define'...