Sublime Text's syntax highlighting of regexes in python leaks into surrounding code

Question

I have a problem with sublime text which should be generally all editors. When I have a regular expression like this.

listRegex = re.findall(r'[*][[][[].*', testString)

All the text after the regular expression will be incorrectly highlighted, because of the [[], specifically the [ without a close bracket. While the intention of this regular expression is correct, the editor doesn't know this.

This is just an annoyance I don't know how to deal with. Anyone know how to fix this?

Gosnell

Just put the closing braces in a comment at the end of the line. The line itself may not look good but at least it doesn't taint the rest of the code highlighting. – Uncommercial

You'll need to modify the Package/Python/Regular Expressions (Python).tmLanguage file to fix this – Pudgy

Answer 1

While it doesn't really answer your question, you could just use a different regex:

listRegex = re.findall(r'\*\[\[.*', testString)

Or you can prevent any regex highligting:

listRegex = re.findall(R'[*][[][[].*', testString)

---

Proper solution

Add the following to .../Packages/Python/Regular Expressions (Python).tmLanguage on line 266 (first and third blocks are context):

<key>name</key>
<string>constant.other.character-class.set.regexp</string>
<key>patterns</key>
<array>

    <dict>
        <key>match</key>
        <string>\[</string>
    </dict>

    <dict>
        <key>include</key>
        <string>#character-class</string>
    </dict>

Pudgy

By the way, thanks for the answer. And all other who tried to help :) – Gosnell

What does the change of r to R do? I quite don't understand the sentence above. – Strong

@Qwerty: Python doesn't care which you use. Sublime text will only syntax highlight regexes if the raw string uses a lowercase r. I don't know if this is by design or accidental – Pudgy

@Pudgy So we are actually exploiting a bug, haha, clever! :) – Strong

Answer 2

That's a known bug of Sublime Text's Python Syntax Highlighter that only affects raw strings.

By the way in a regex you can match a special character in two ways:

1. Enclosing it in a square bracket: [[]

2. Escaping it with a backslash: \[

The second one is preferred, so you can change your code to:

listRegex = re.findall(r'\*\[\[.*', testString)

Eventful