The SPAN_REGEXP rule is similar to the
SPAN rule except the start sequence is taken to be
a regular expression. In addition to the attributes supported by
the SPAN tag, the
HASH_CHAR attribute must be specified. It must be set to
the first character that
the regular expression matches. This rules out using regular expressions
which can match more than one character at the start position. The regular expression match cannot span more than one line, either.
Any text matched by groups in the BEGIN regular
expression is substituted in the END string. See
below for an example of where this is useful.
Regular expression syntax is described in Appendix E, Regular Expressions.
Here is a SPAN_REGEXP rule that highlights
“read-ins” in shell scripts:
<SPAN_REGEXP HASH_CHAR="<" TYPE="LITERAL1" DELEGATE="LITERAL">
<BEGIN><![CDATA[<<[[:space:]'"]*([[:alnum:]_]+)[[:space:]'"]*]]></BEGIN>
<END>$1</END>
</SPAN_REGEXP>
Here is a SPAN_REGEXP rule that highlights constructs
placed between <#ftl and >,
as long as the <#ftl is followed by a word break:
<SPAN_REGEXP TYPE="KEYWORD1" HASH_CHAR="<" DELEGATE="EXPRESSION">
<BEGIN><#ftl\></BEGIN>
<END>></END>
</SPAN_REGEXP>