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Bug 367229

Summary:	[syntax highlighting] Syntax Highlighting for regular expressions
Product:	[Eclipse Project] JDT	Reporter:	Nathan Reynolds <numeralnathan>
Component:	Text	Assignee:	JDT-Text-Inbox <jdt-text-inbox>
Status:	ASSIGNED ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	P3	CC:	daniel_megert, deepakazad
Version:	3.8
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:

Description Nathan Reynolds

2011-12-20 12:53:27 EST

Build Identifier: 20110916-0149

Regular expressions are a powerful feature of Java.  They are written in Strings.  The code editor displays the regular expression as any other String.  This makes it difficult to work with regular expressions.

If the String is used in Pattern.compile(), then the code editor can know that it is a regular expression.

The code editor could highlight matching ( ) and [ ].  Backreferences could highlight the matching group.  Quantifiers such as * + ? {} could highlight their targets.

This enhancement would make working with Regular Expressions much easier.

Reproducible: Always