Syntax coloring: Unable to color special syntax

Question

I am writing a mode to color a few common syntax in a symbolic language called FORM. I am a new user of emacs and I took the help of this website to write down the following code. I modified the original code changing the syntax that I want to be colored. But keywords that have special characters (hash # / dot . /underscore _ ), such as "#define", "...", "(dot)sort", "(dot)end", "d_" etc, do not show color.

(setq form-font-lock-keywords
    (let* (
          ;; define several category of keywords
          (x-keywords '("S" "s" "V" "v" "I" "i" "F" "f" "CF" "cf"))
          (x-types '("#define" "..."))
          (x-constants '(".sort" ".end" ".store" ".global" ".clear" ))
          (x-events '("break" "bracket" ))
          (x-functions '("d_" "g_" "g5_" "g6_" "g7_" "gi_"))
          ;; generate regex string for each category of keywords
          (x-keywords-regexp (regexp-opt x-keywords 'words))
          (x-types-regexp (regexp-opt x-types 'words))
          (x-constants-regexp (regexp-opt x-constants 'words))
          (x-events-regexp (regexp-opt x-events 'words))
          (x-functions-regexp (regexp-opt x-functions 'words)))

      `(
        (,x-types-regexp . font-lock-type-face)
        (,x-constants-regexp . font-lock-constant-face)
        (,x-events-regexp . font-lock-builtin-face)
        (,x-functions-regexp . font-lock-function-name-face)
        (,x-keywords-regexp . font-lock-keyword-face)
        ;; note: order above matters, because once colored, that part won't change.
        ;; in general, put longer words first
       )))

(define-generic-mode  form-mode nil  "form mode"
   "Major mode for editing FORM symbolic tool."

    ;; code for syntax highlighting
    (setq font-lock-defaults '((form-font-lock-keywords))))

(provide 'form-mode)

To my understanding, what I did was:

1. I have defined categories of the keywords --> x-name of the category

2. Generated regular expression - regex (I am not sure of its function in this context) for each category

3. assigned regex to a font that has unique color

4. set nil as parent mode

At first I thought that my parent mode was not accurate to show color for #/./_ symbols, but now I think that's not the main issue. I think the problem comes from 1-3 options. Please provide your valuable suggestion on this problem. Many thanks!

Answer 1

I think that is because (regexp-opt foo 'words) assumes that your keywords are, well, words. Try to rewrite those expressions (and only those, leave the alphabetic ones alone) like this:

(defun gmunu--concat-regexp (stuff)
  (if (null stuff) ""
    (let ((result (regexp-quote (car stuff)))
          (remaining (cdr stuff)))
       (while remaining
          (setq result (concat result "\\|" (regexp-quote (car remaining))))
          (setq remaining (cdr remaining)))
       result)))

and then change (regexp-opt foo 'words) to (gmunu--concat-regexp foo)

Untested, but I'm confident this is the gist of the problem.