Thread: Parsing C and making syntax highlights, probelm with comments

Ok, I have written the bare-bones of this program that parses through C code and highlights key words and common things. Like an IDE an it puts HTML encoding around the words that need to be highlighted. I got everything working except checking for comments.

i got the // to work but not the: /* and */
any ideas on how I could get that to work, here is the function that does the parsing:

Code:

void parse(CString filename, const apvector<synkey> &set,ostream& out)
{
	ifstream in(filename.std_str());
	CString buf;
	char c;
	char back;
	int k=0;
	bool end=false;
	while(in.get(c))
	{
		if(buf=="//")
		{
			out<<"<font color=\""<<color("green")<<"\">";
			out<<buf<<c;
			getline(in,buf);
			out<<buf;
			out<<"</font>"<<endl;
			buf="";
		}

		else if(c==' '||c=='\t'||c=='\n'||c=='('||c=='['||c=='{'||c==';'||c==')'||c=='}'||c==']'||c=='<'||c=='>')
		{
			
				
			if(buf!="")
			{
				if((k=iskey(buf,set))!=-1)
					out<<"<font color=\""<<color(set[k].color)<<"\">"<<buf<<"</font>";
				else
					out<<buf;
				buf="";
			}
			if(c=='<')
				out<<"&lt;";
			else if(c=='>')
				out<<"&gt;";
			else
				out<<c;
		}
		else
			buf+=c;
	}
}

if you run it with the rest of my prog. it works fine but when I implement something like:

Code:

		else if(buf=="/*")
		{
			out<<"<font color=\""<<color("green")<<"\">";
			out<<buf<<c;
			buf="";
			while(!end && !(in.eof()))
			{
				back=c;
				in.get(c);
				

				if(back=='*'&&c=='/')
				{
					out<<"*/</font>";
					end=true;
				}
				else
					out<<c;
				
			}
			buf="";
		}

right after the first if clause, it doesn't do it right. I am doing something wrong I can tell, but I can't figure it out. I have run through the text file character by character trying to figure out why it does it...
here was an output from a small section of highlighted code that I was checking for comments on:

Code:

<font color="#66CC00">//loads of comments</font>
<font color="#66CC00">//yes comments!</font>

<font color="#66CC00">/* comments **/</font> 
<font color="#66CC00">/*more comments*/
<font color="#0000FF">struct</font> synkey
{
	CString key; 
	CString color;
};

CString color(CString clr <font color="#66CC00">/*what should I do about all these comments?*/)

when the original piece was:

Code:

//loads of comments
//yes comments!

/* comments */
/*more comments*/
struct synkey
{
	CString key; 
	CString color;
};

CString color(CString clr /*what should I do about all these comments?*/)

any ideas or improvements on my method of parsing would be greatly appreciated, I plan to redo the whole thing if I can't figure this out. Usually if I redo it all and start over it just works itself out.

As you can see I take apart the input by character and do single character checking and use a str (CString) to hold words in a buffer and then check them from a syntax file

Also, know of any ways to make double character checking easier?
I was thinking about using in-code tags to signal if Quotes are being used or a comment line is active but I would have to rewrite almost all of parse()
Right now, I just want to see if I can get the bare-minimum working before I tear apart the program.

Thanks

-LC

I figured it out, stupid really...
I forgot to change end=false at the end of the while loop, which lead to all the errors. That and the output should have been just
out<<"/</font>";
because the * was already displayed before...

-LC