How do you implement syntax highlighting?

Posted by ML on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by ML
Published on 2010-04-17T00:56:17Z Indexed on 2010/04/17 6:33 UTC
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c++

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lexical-analyser

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osx

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objective-c

I am embarking on some learning and I want to write my own syntax highlighting for files in C++.

Can anyone give me ideas on how to go about doing this?

To me it seems that when a file is opened:

It would need to be parsed and decided what type of source file it is. Trusting the extension might not be fool-proof
A way to know what keywords/commands apply to what language
A way to decide what color each keyword/command gets

I want to do this on OS X, using C++ or Objective-C.

Can anyone provide pointers on how I might get started with this?

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