batch file grammar

[Michael Kujawa]

I'm trying to put together a grammar for cmd batch files, and I'm stumbling on the precedence issue with my keywords. If I just list out the keywords, then those keywords will be detected in innappropriate places (http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ead.php?t=3773). So I tried to create a catch-all rule (type String) to be my lowest priority rule, but I can't use the typical identifier rule because there are so many legal characters. Consider the following:

:foo
  set F=%~n2
  call :sub /Oo..\call\1.0-3_4*

The first line should be a label. On the second line, I want the set, the =, and the %~n2 to be a keyword, operator, and identifier respectively. On the third line, I want the call, the :sub, and the rest to be a keyword, label, and string respectively.

my catch-all is currently the Basic, regex

[^ %=()]+

This works for lines 2 and 3, but it's determining :foo to be a String instead of a label. Label is defined as a Basic, Regex

:(\w|_)+

If I put a space after the :foo, it recognizes it as a label. Does BC think String matches more characters because it matches the ^ and $ as well? I'm at a loss.

I am really struggling with this grammar, having spent a couple of hours on it now. It seems like the "List" primitive isn't powerful enough, and the "most characters" thing (http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ead.php?t=3376) was not at all obvious (and not in the help for the grammar tab.)

[Michael Bulgrien]

There is already a basic batch grammar file available for download here.

It may not have the complexity you are looking for, but perhaps you could use it as a starting point?

[Michael Bulgrien]

Label is defined as a Basic, Regex

:(\w|_)+

Try adding begin-of-line ^ and end-of-line $ characters:

^\w*:(\w|_$)+

[Michael Kujawa]

I didn't include the line ending characters because I wanted the label to be highlighted in the goto and call statements as well.

I downloaded the bcpkg you suggested and tweaked it up. It uses [_a-z]\w* as its catch-all identifier, which seems to work well enough (even though it doesn't even match the entire identifier.)

I think I discovered at least one of my major troubles: when editing the grammar and choosing 'OK', the reparse isn't always correct. In other words, if I then close the diff and re-open it, I will sometimes get different results! I suspect I had tried many correct things but been deceived by this.

My biggest changes were to expand the definition of a variable (which I changed to Environment Variable) to include all of the wacky path and substring parameters.

Now I have useful syntax highlighting for my complicated batch files, and I am happy Thanks for your help

[Aaron]

Hello Michael,

I would expect BC to refresh after changing your file formats. Let's make sure we are seeing the same thing. Any specific information about your edits would be useful, including:

Could you send in a pair of screenshots demonstrating this? Or

Could you send a pair or example files and 2 BC Support Packages (Help menu -> Support; Export). One with your rules pre-changes, and one post-changes.

Please email the above to [email protected] with a link to this post.

Thanks.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Also, I would be interested in seeing Michael K's tweaked batch file format as I, too, have a considerable number of complex batch files. If, comparing against my own files, I don't find any issues with the tweaked rules, it might be nice to adopt them as a replacement for the package currently available on the Scooter site.

[Michael Kujawa]

I'm not able to reproduce what I saw earlier (I changed the order of the grammar rules, which inexplicably fixed something. When I changed the order back, it still worked.)

I have found another problem: If you change the entry for Label in the downloadable batch grammar from "Basic" to "List" but otherwise keep it the same, the regex no longer works. (I did check "Regular expressions. Other expressions added to the list work.) Since my initial problem was with matching labels, this may have been what I was actually bumping in to.

I did a pass on my grammar looking for special cases, so hopefully it's worthy for other people to use.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Thanks, Michael

I checked out the batch file format on my command scripts, and everything looks fine.