Re: multi-character syntactic entities in syntax tables

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 26.04.2013 23:22, Erik Charlebois wrote:
> Off the top of my head, point motion (e.g. forward-word should skip the
> entire word, not stop where the syntax class changes from "(" to "w")
> and font locking (show-paren-mode should highlight the entire matching
> words).

But `forward-word' will jump to the end of the next word then, since 
"begin" as a whole would have non-word syntax.

> Since the matching keyword lengths can be different (begin vs end), my
> understanding is I can't just turn them into ((((( and ))) because it
> doesn't balance.

Yes, that's not what my suggestion was.

> Currently I have some hacks for Ruby mode that makes the first
> characters of the block keywords have "(" or ")" syntax class. It works
> fine, aside from point motion and font locking.

I would've put ")" at the end of "end", but otherwise, that is it. I 
didn't expect it to work with current open/close parens syntax classes, 
though: "string quotes", in similar circumstances, doesn't.

The problem with font-lock is important. Maybe we need a syntax class 
that would mark text as symbol (or word) constituent (or delegate to the 
buffer syntax table), and at the same time mark them as parenthesising 
construct.