Syntax highlighting of strings

Maybe this is a fiddly little point, but I think it's the sort of detail that's worth paying attention to.

The theory is:

Syntax highlighting of strings could be improved to make reading easier

In the following code example, look at the way the string is 'highlighted':

return string.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{0}</a>", link);

The red highlighting covers not just the literal string itself, but also the quote characters and the escape characters: the 'meta' guff that decorates the string.

So in the previous example, there's no clue given to the naked eye that some of the quote marks are "literal" quote marks, and others are delimiters to mark the beginning or end of the string.

Instead, syntax highlighting gives up, right when it could be most helpful. And it's left as a parsing exercise for the programmer to determine what is and isn't really a string.

Here's a different way the syntax highlighting could be implemented:

return string.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{0}</a>", link);

Now colour (actually -- saturation) is used to differentiate between the literal parts of the string, and the 'meta' parts of the string (the escape characters and the quote delimiters).

It looks strange at first glance, because it's an alien concept -- but i think that if you were used to this type of highlighting, it would allow you to "see" what escaping is going on in a string, far more readily.

More importantly -- it allows you to selectively 'see past' the escaping.

If you look at the second example, you can 'train' your eyes to focus on just the literal string itself -- until you see basically:

return string.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{0}</a>

And thus you can reason about the text you've written, or proof-read it, in greater isolation from things that only the parser needs to worry about (the mechanics of escape characters etc.)

You know, that's a good idea.
It'd work even better if they were colored gray-on-white (instead of black-on-gray), since they'd sorta fade into the background (assuming you use a white background).

See, this is the kind of thing I wish I had never read. Not because I disagree with what you wrote, but because I've instantaneously gone from ignorantly complacent with my current string syntax highlighting to completely depressed that it doesn't work the way you suggest.

Thanks for ruining my day. ;-)

The VS 2008 XAML editor does highlighting of binding codes within strings.

No HTML allowed, so I'll describe it:

<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Name}" />

In the default colour scheme:
All non-alpha characters are blue (<, =, ", {, }, /, >)
"TextBlock" and "Binding" are brown
"Text" and "Path" are red
"Name" is blue (same as non-alpha)

I was going to say the exact same thing as Shoq9, but he beat me to it. First of all... good idea. Second, yes, have the quotes and escape characters fade a bit into the background (gray on white), so that the actual string jumps out at you more.

Great idea and I'm with Shoq9. The more interesting bits in my string are the non-meta characters :)

Top feedback Shoq9 and Omer -- i will update the post to reflect the colours you suggest,

I was never happy with the colours I went with, and nearly stopped myself from blogging this as a result.

"I don't know graphic design, but i know what i hate" -- and i hated the grey background.

I'll try a "faded-out" red colour and that should improve the appearance a bit.

Not only is this a truly EXCELLENT idea, but its already entirely achievable in Visual Studio using some freeware tools (or the 'naked' VS SDK if you feel brave).

Check out this video from the Deveoper Express website about how to do just the kind of thing you're suggesting using their DXCore freeware VSSDK-abstraction layer:

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/CodeRush/Trainings/DXCore_PaintAssignmentExpressions/DXCore_PaintAssignmentExpressions.html

This isn't intended as an inadvertent advertisement for DXCore (tho personally I happen to love the toolset) but is more intended to maybe whet the appetite of someone with more spare time than I to quickly code just such an add-in and then make it available to the world-at-large out of the goodness of their heart :)

-Steve B.

Now it'd be nice if when you float over that monstrosity of a string, if it rendered the final result in a tooltip using appropriate text. Something like like the font previewer, but a string previewer instead.

I like this idea as well!

How would escape sequences other than backslash-doublequote look with respect to this syntax highlighting? Probably sequences such as \n would *not* be faded, since you wouldn't want the reader to "see past" the fact that a newline is embedded in the string?

@jon, good question.
here's my thought:

for double backslash -- the first backslash is faded, the second one isn't.

for backslash anything else (e.g. \n, \r, \" \t ) both characters are faded.

A tooltip (as Dom suggested above) could be used to give a 'wysiwyg' view of the string.

Syntax highlighting of strings

Syntax highlighting of strings could be improved to make reading easier

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