ST Community Docs

Appearance

Syntax Definitions ​

Syntax definitions make Sublime Text aware of programming and markup languages. Most noticeably, they work together with colors to provide syntax highlighting. Syntax definitions define scopes that divide the text in a buffer into named regions. Several editing features in Sublime Text make extensive use of this fine-grained contextual information.

Essentially, syntax definitions consist of regular expressions used to find text, as well as more or less arbitrary, dot-separated strings called scopes or scope names. For every occurrence of a given regular expression, Sublime Text gives the matching text its corresponding scope name.

Deprecation Notice

For Sublime Text 3 (Build 3084), a new syntax definition format has been added with the .sublime-syntax extension.

It is highly encouraged to be used in favor of the legacy TextMate format described in this document, unless compatibility with older versions or other editors is desired.

Documentation is available at the official documentation.

See Also

Reference for TextMate Syntax Definitions

Prerequisites ​

In order to follow this tutorial, you will need to install PackageDev, a package intended to ease the creation of new syntax definitions for Sublime Text. Follow the installation notes in the "Getting Started" section of the readme.

File format ​

Sublime Text uses property list (Plist) files to store syntax definitions. However, because editing XML files is a cumbersome task, we'll use YAML instead and convert it to Plist format afterwards. This is where the :PackageDev: package (mentioned above) comes in.

Note

If you experience unexpected errors during this tutorial, chances are :PackageDev: or YAML is to blame. Don't immediately think your problem is due to a bug in Sublime Text.

By all means, do edit the Plist files by hand if you prefer to work in XML, but always keep in mind their differing needs in regards to escape sequences, many XML tags etc.

Scopes ​

Scopes are a key concept in Sublime Text. Essentially, they are named text regions in a buffer. They don't do anything by themselves, but Sublime Text peeks at them when it needs contextual information.

For instance, when you trigger a snippet, Sublime Text checks the scope bound to the snippet and looks at the caret's position in the file. If the caret's current position matches the snippet's scope selector, Sublime Text fires it off. Otherwise, nothing happens.

Info

There's a slight difference between scopes and scope selectors: Scopes are the names defined in a syntax definition, while scope selectors are used in items like snippets and key bindings to target scopes. When creating a new syntax definition, you care about scopes; when you want to constrain a snippet to a certain scope, you use a scope selector.

Scopes can be nested to allow for a high degree of granularity. You can drill down the hierarchy very much like with CSS selectors. For instance, thanks to scope selectors, you could have a key binding activated only within single quoted strings in Python source code, but not inside single quoted strings in any other language.

Sublime Text inherits the idea of scopes from Textmate, a text editor for Mac. Textmate's online manual contains further information about scope selectors that's useful for Sublime Text users too. In particular, Color Schemes make extensive use of scopes to style every aspect of a language in the desired color.

How Syntax Definitions Work ​

At their core, syntax definitions are arrays of regular expressions paired with scope names. Sublime Text will try to match these patterns against a buffer's text and attach the corresponding scope name to all occurrences. These pairs of regular expressions and scope names are known as rules.

Rules are applied in order, one line at a time. Rules are applied in the following order:

  1. The rule that matches at the first position in a line
  2. The rule that comes first in the array

Each rule consumes the matched text region, which therefore will be excluded from the next rule's matching attempt (save for a few exceptions). In practical terms, this means that you should take care to go from more specific rules to more general ones when you create a new syntax definition. Otherwise, a greedy regular expression might swallow parts you'd like to have styled differently.

Syntax definitions from separate files can be combined, and they can be recursively applied too.

Your First Syntax Definition ​

By way of example, let's create a syntax definition for Sublime Text snippets. We'll be styling the actual snippet content, not the whole .sublime-snippet file.

Note

Since syntax definitions are primarily used to enable syntax highlighting, we'll use the phrase to style to mean to break down a source code file into scopes. Keep in mind, however, that colors are a different thing from syntax definitions and that scopes have many more uses besides syntax highlighting.

Here are the elements we want to style in a snippet:

  • Variables ($PARAM1, $USER_NAME\ ...)
  • Simple fields ($0, $1\ ...)
  • Complex fields with placeholders (${1:Hello})
  • Nested fields (${1:Hello ${2:World}!})
  • Escape sequences (\$, \<, …)
  • Illegal sequences ($, <, \, …)

Here are the elements we don't want to style because they are too complex for this example:

  • Variable Substitution (${1/Hello/Hi/g})

Note

Before continuing, make sure you've installed the :PackageDev: package as explained above.

Creating A New Syntax Definition ​

To create a new syntax definition, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Tools | Packages | Package Development | New Syntax Definition
  2. Save the new file in your Packages/User folder as a .YAML-tmLanguage file.

You now should see a file like this:

yaml
# [PackageDev] target_format: plist, ext: tmLanguage
---
name: Syntax Name
scopeName: source.syntax_name
fileTypes: []
uuid: 0da65be4-5aac-4b6f-8071-1aadb970b8d9

patterns:
-
...

Let's examine the key elements.

  • name
    The name that Sublime Text will display in the syntax definition drop-down list. Use a short, descriptive name. Typically, you will use the name of the programming language you are creating the syntax definition for.

  • scopeName
    The topmost scope for this syntax definition. It takes the form source.<lang_name> or text.<lang_name>. For programming languages, use source. For markup and everything else, use text.

  • fileTypes
    This is a list of file extensions (without the leading dot). When opening files of these types, Sublime Text will automatically activate this syntax definition for them.

  • uuid
    This is a unique identifier for this syntax definition. Each new syntax definition gets its own uuid. Even though Sublime Text itself ignores it, don't modify this.

  • patterns
    A container for your patterns.

For our example, fill the template with the following information:

yaml
# [PackageDev] target_format: plist, ext: tmLanguage
---
name: Sublime Snippet (Raw)
scopeName: source.ssraw
fileTypes: [ssraw]
uuid: 0da65be4-5aac-4b6f-8071-1aadb970b8d9

patterns:
-
...

Note

YAML is not a very strict format, but can cause headaches when you don't know its conventions. It supports single and double quotes, but you may also omit them as long as the content does not create another YAML literal. If the conversion to Plist fails, take a look at the output panel for more information on the error. We'll explain later how to convert a syntax definition in YAML to Plist. This will also cover the first commented line in the template.

The --- and ... are optional.

Analyzing Patterns ​

The patterns array can contain several types of element. We'll look at some of them in the following sections. If you want to learn more about patterns, refer to Textmate's online manual.

Matches ​

Matches take this form:

yaml
match: (?i:m)y \s+[Rr]egex
name: string.format
comment: This comment is optional.

Sublime Text uses Oniguruma's syntax for regular expressions in syntax definitions. Several existing syntax definitions make use of features supported by this regular expression engine that aren't part of perl-style regular expressions, hence the requirement for Oniguruma.

match
: A regular expression Sublime Text will use to find matches.

name
: The name of the scope that should be applied to any occurrences of match.

comment
: An optional comment about this pattern.

Let's go back to our example. It looks like this:

yaml
# [PackageDev] target_format: plist, ext: tmLanguage
---
name: Sublime Snippet (Raw)
scopeName: source.ssraw
fileTypes: [ssraw]
uuid: 0da65be4-5aac-4b6f-8071-1aadb970b8d9

patterns:
-
...

That is, make sure the patterns array is empty.

Now we can begin to add our rules for Sublime snippets. Let's start with simple fields. These could be matched with a regex like so:

perl
\$[0-9]+
# or...
\$\d+

We can then build our pattern like this:

yaml
name: keyword.other.ssraw
match: \$\d+
comment: Tab stops like $1, $2...

Choosing the Right Scope Name

Naming scopes isn't obvious sometimes. Check the Textmate naming conventions for guidance on scope names. :PackageDev: automatically provides completions for scope names according to these conventions. It is important to re-use the basic categories outlined there if you want to achieve the highest compatibility with existing colors.

Color schemes have hardcoded scope names in them. They could not possibly include every scope name you can think of, so they target the standard ones plus some rarer ones on occasion (like for CSS or Markdown). This means that two color schemes using the same syntax definition may render the text differently!

Bear in mind too that you should use the scope name that best suits your needs or preferences. It'd be perfectly fine to assign a scope like constant.numeric to anything other than a number if you have a good reason to do so.

And we can add it to our syntax definition too:

yaml
# [PackageDev] target_format: plist, ext: tmLanguage
---
name: Sublime Snippet (Raw)
scopeName: source.ssraw
fileTypes: [ssraw]
uuid: 0da65be4-5aac-4b6f-8071-1aadb970b8d9

patterns:
- comment: Tab stops like $1, $2...
  name: keyword.other.ssraw
  match: \$\d+
...

Note

You should use two spaces for indent. This is the recommended indent for YAML and lines up with lists like shown above.

We're now ready to convert our file to .tmLanguage. Syntax definitions use Textmate's .tmLanguage extension for compatibility reasons. As explained above, they are simply Plist XML files.

Follow these steps to perform the conversion:

  • Make sure that Automatic is selected in Tools | Build System, or select Convert to ....
  • Press Ctrl B. A .tmLanguage file will be generated for you in the same folder as your .YAML-tmLanguage file.
  • Sublime Text will reload the changes to the syntax definition.

In case you are wondering why :PackageDev: knows what you want to convert your file to: It's specified in the first comment line.

You have now created your first syntax definition. Next, open a new file and save it with the extension .ssraw. The buffer's syntax name should switch to "Sublime Snippet (Raw)" automatically, and you should get syntax highlighting if you type $1 or any other simple snippet field.

Let's proceed to creating another rule for environment variables.

yaml
comment: Variables like $PARAM1, $TM_SELECTION...
name: keyword.other.ssraw
match: \$[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]+

Repeat the above steps to update the .tmLanguage file.

Fine Tuning Matches ​

You might have noticed, for instance, that the entire text in $PARAM1 is styled the same way. Depending on your needs or your personal preferences, you may want the $ to stand out. That's where captures come in. Using captures, you can break a pattern down into components to target them individually.

Let's rewrite one of our previous patterns to use captures:

yaml
comment: Variables like $PARAM1, $TM_SELECTION...
name: keyword.other.ssraw
match: \$([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]+)
captures:
  '1': {name: constant.numeric.ssraw}

Captures introduce complexity to your rule, but they are pretty straightforward. Notice how numbers refer to parenthesized groups left to right. Of course, you can have as many capture groups as you want.

Note

Writing 1 on a new line and pressing tab will autocomplete to '1': {name: } thanks to :PackageDev:.

Arguably, you'd want the other scope to be visually consistent with this one. Go ahead and change it too.

Note

As with ususal regular expressions and substitutions, the capture group '0' applies to the whole match.

Begin-End Rules ​

Up to now we've been using a simple rule. Although we've seen how to dissect patterns into smaller components, sometimes you'll want to target a larger portion of your source code that is clearly delimited by start and end marks.

Literal strings enclosed by quotation marks or other delimiting constructs are better dealt with by begin-end rules. This is a skeleton for one of these rules:

yaml
name:
begin:
end:

Well, at least in their simplest version. Let's take a look at one that includes all available options:

yaml
name:
contentName:
begin:
beginCaptures:
  '0': {name: }
  # ...
end:
endCaptures:
  '0': {name: }
  # ...
patterns:
- name:
  match:
# ...

Some elements may look familiar, but their combination might be daunting. Let's inspect them individually.

name : Just like with simple captures this sets the following scope name to the whole match, including begin and end marks. Effectively, this will create nested scopes for beginCaptures, endCaptures and patterns defined within this rule. Optional.

contentName : Unlike the name this only applies a scope name to the enclosed text. Optional.

begin : Regex for the opening mark for this scope.

end : Regex for the end mark for this scope.

beginCaptures : Captures for the begin marker. They work like captures for simple matches. Optional.

endCaptures : Same as beginCaptures but for the end marker. Optional.

patterns : An array of patterns to match only against the begin-end's content; they aren't matched against the text consumed by begin or end themselves. Optional.

We'll use this rule to style nested complex fields in snippets:

yaml
name: variable.complex.ssraw
contentName: string.other.ssraw
begin: '(\$)(\{)([0-9]+):'
beginCaptures:
  '1': {name: keyword.other.ssraw}
  '3': {name: constant.numeric.ssraw}
end: \}
patterns:
- include: $self
- name: support.other.ssraw
  match: .

This is the most complex pattern we'll see in this tutorial. The begin and end keys are self-explanatory: they define a region enclosed between ${<NUMBER>: and }. We need to wrap the begin pattern into quotes because otherwise the trailing : would tell the parser to expect another dictionary key. beginCaptures further divides the begin mark into smaller scopes.

The most interesting part, however, is patterns. Recursion, and the importance of ordering, have finally made their appearance here.

We've seen above that fields can be nested. In order to account for this, we need to style nested fields recursively. That's what the include rule does when we furnish it the $self value: it recursively applies our entire syntax definition to the text captured by our begin-end rule. This portion excludes the text individually consumed by the regexes for begin and end.

Remember, matched text is consumed; thus, it is excluded from the next match attempt and can't be matched again.

To finish off complex fields, we'll style placeholders as strings. Since we've already matched all possible tokens inside a complex field, we can safely tell Sublime Text to give any remaining text (.) a literal string scope. Note that this doesn't work if we made the pattern greedy (.+) because this includes possible nested references.

Note

We could've used contentName: string.other.ssraw instead of the last pattern but this way we introduce the importance of ordering and how matches are consumed.

Final Touches ​

Lastly, let's style escape sequences and illegal sequences, and then we can wrap up.

yaml
- comment: Sequences like \$, \> and \<
  name: constant.character.escape.ssraw
  match: \\[$<>]

- comment: Unescaped and unmatched magic characters
  name: invalid.illegal.ssraw
  match: '[$<>]'

The only hard thing here is not forgetting that [] enclose arrays in YAML and thus must be wrapped in quotes. Other than that, the rules are pretty straightforward if you're familiar with regular expressions.

However, you must take care to place the second rule after any others matching the $ character, since otherwise it will be consumed and result in every following expression not matching.

Also, even after adding these two additional rules, note that our recursive begin-end rule from above continues to work as expected.

At long last, here's the final syntax definition:

yaml
# [PackageDev] target_format: plist, ext: tmLanguage
---
name: Sublime Snippet (Raw)
scopeName: source.ssraw
fileTypes: [ssraw]
uuid: 0da65be4-5aac-4b6f-8071-1aadb970b8d9

patterns:
- comment: Tab stops like $1, $2...
  name: keyword.other.ssraw
  match: \$(\d+)
  captures:
    '1': {name: constant.numeric.ssraw}

- comment: Variables like $PARAM1, $TM_SELECTION...
  name: keyword.other.ssraw
  match: \$([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]+)
  captures:
    '1': {name: constant.numeric.ssraw}

- name: variable.complex.ssraw
  begin: '(\$)(\{)([0-9]+):'
  beginCaptures:
    '1': {name: keyword.other.ssraw}
    '3': {name: constant.numeric.ssraw}
  end: \}
  patterns:
  - include: $self
  - name: support.other.ssraw
    match: .

- comment: Sequences like \$, \> and \<
  name: constant.character.escape.ssraw
  match: \\[$<>]

- comment: Unescaped and unmatched magic characters
  name: invalid.illegal.ssraw
  match: '[$<>]'
...

There are more available constructs and code reuse techniques using a "repository", but the above explanations should get you started with the creation of syntax definitions.

Note

If you previously used JSON for syntax definitions you are still able to do this because :PackageDev: is backwards compatible.

If you want to consider switching to YAML (either from JSON or directly from Plist), it provides a command named PackageDev: Convert to YAML and Rearrange Syntax Definition which will automatically format the resulting YAML in a pleasurable way.