From: James Amundson
Subject: Syntax highlighting for Common Lisp in (X)Emacs
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 14:26:01 +0000
Message-ID: <9n810i$cf5$1@info4.fnal.gov>

Perhaps I am missing something, but I don't see any way to get proper syntax
highlighting with my Common Lisp files in XEmacs. The generic lisp mode works
reasonably well until I start using the vertical bar (|) character. In Common
Lisp the expression
	(setq |an improbable symbol"| 5)
is perfectly valid. Unfortunately, Emacs Lisp mode does not recognize the
quoting characteristics of the vertical bar in Common Lisp, so it thinks there
is an unbalanced " character. Syntax highlighting is then thrown off for the
rest of the buffer.

Does anyone have a solution to this problem? It is causing me real grief.

Thanks,
Jim Amundson

From: bruce ingalls
Subject: unbalanced " font lock
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 15:46:40 +0000
Message-ID: <3B979A96.1080506@panix.com>

Followups set to comp.emacs.xemacs. Note that this is also a gnu emacs 
problem.

I see this problem in many modes (Perl, C,...), unfortunately. A sad 
hack is to add a comment,
with a closing quote:

(setq |an improbable symbol"| 5)	;"

I believe that the core font-lock code is using largely stateless 
regular expressions, and that it
needs a volunteer to write reusable, language-mode independent 
literal-state code (and comment
font-lock state code)

James Amundson wrote:

>(setq |an improbable symbol"| 5)
>is perfectly valid. Unfortunately, Emacs Lisp mode does not recognize the
>quoting characteristics of the vertical bar in Common Lisp, so it thinks there
>is an unbalanced " character. Syntax highlighting is then thrown off for the
>rest of the buffer.
>