Hi, I'm writing a syntax highlighter for C++/CLI and so far, all of the one-line highlighting (single keywords, strings, etc.) is working fine. I would also like to be able to highlight multi-line comments, preprocessor macros and other things that can extend beyond one line. Right now I just check to see how many characters have been entered or deleted (when the text is changed) and use the cursor position to determine which lines need to have their syntax re-highlighted. I can't apply the same technique to multi-line targets, as I'm not sure how to tell where highlighting should begin and/or end. I've Googled around, but I haven't been able to find anything that really goes into depth on this subject. If anyone knows of any articles, links, or info that they can post, it is much appreciated!

You can download the source for loads of text editors for free and read how they do it. I would paste how Emacs does it, but it's based on compiled emacs lisp for a 'mode'. IIRC, it uses something similar to the regexps that Flarelocke mentioned.

I didn't realize how powerful regular expressions could be until I started looking into them today. I think I'll be able to work something out with them. Thanks for your replies!