sponsor Vim development Vim logo Vim Book Ad

arc.vim : A syntax highlighter & filetype plugin for Paul Graham's Arc Lisp dialect.

 script karma  Rating 10/4, Downloaded by 947  Comments, bugs, improvements  Vim wiki

created by
AJ V
 
script type
syntax
 
description
(Scroll down to see the install details.)

Note: if you have a bug to report, please do so with the issue tracker at http://bitbucket.org/fallintothis/arc-vim/issues/ since I probably won't respond to emails.

I've only tested this on Vim 7.2.  I have no idea (one way or the other) how backwards-compatible it is.

SYNTAX:

The following options are available for customizing the Arc highlighter.  They work well in conjunction with the accompanying Arc ftplugin options (see below).

- g:arc_rainbow

If this variable is nonzero, then matching pairs of parentheses will highlight in 10 different rainbow colors.  If this variable is 0, then rainbow colors are gone; it's just normal parentheses and quasiquoted parentheses.

- g:arc_always_atstrings

In Arc 3, there is an option to enable string interpolation of arbitrary expressions using at-signs by saying
  
  (declare 'atstrings t)

Then, for instance, "1 + 2 = @(+ 1 2)" is the same as "1 + 2 = 3".  If g:arc_always_atstrings is nonzero, then expressions after the @-symbol inside of strings will be highlighted like normal code, as though you had (declare 'atstrings t).  If this variable is 0, then atstrings will not highlight.

If you want more intelligent control over atstring highlighting, check out the accompanying ftplugin options below.

EXAMPLE:

You could put

  let g:arc_always_atstrings=1

in your .vimrc, and whenever you were highlighting an Arc file, atstrings would highlight, but parentheses would be colored normally (non-rainbow), since you don't have to explicitly set either variable to 0.  If they don't exist, they'll do nothing anyways.

FTPLUGIN:

The following options are available for customizing the Arc ftplugin.  They are meant to work in conjunction with the accompanying Arc syntax highlighter (see above).

- g:arc_detect_atstrings

In Arc 3, there is an option to enable string interpolation of arbitrary expressions using at-signs by saying
  
  (declare 'atstrings t)

Then, for instance, "1 + 2 = @(+ 1 2)" is the same as "1 + 2 = 3".  If g:arc_detect_atstrings is nonzero, then expressions after the @-symbol inside of strings will be highlighted like normal code according to the following cases:

  - if a form that will enable atstrings, like
      (declare 'atstrings t)
    is in the source code, highlight expressions after @-symbols

  - if a form that will disable atstrings, like
      (declare 'atstrings nil)
    is in the source code, do not highlight expressions after @-symbols

  - if there are multiple forms that contradict each other (enabling
    atstrings in one place while disabling them in another), then be safe and
    do not highlight expressions after @-symbols.

This option can be used as an alternative to g:arc_always_atstrings, which is found in the Arc syntax highlighter (see above).  If, however, g:arc_always_atstrings is nonzero, it will take precedence over g:arc_detect_atstrings and always highlight atstrings.  When g:arc_always_atstrings is 0, behavior is dictated by g:arc_detect_atstrings.

Changes in highlighting are triggered whenever you write to the file.  If you change, say

  (declare 'atstrings t)

to

  (declare 'atstrings nil)

then :w, the atstring highlighting will be turned off.

- g:arc_bodops

IMPORTANT: This feature is currently available only if your Vim installation has +python support.  See :h python

If this variable is nonzero, then on every file write your source code is inspected in an attempt to find top-level macro definitions that have body parameters.  That is,

  (mac foo (vars vals . body)
    something)

will be detected, because it is a macro that takes a rest parameter named "body".  Whereas

  (def foo (a b . body)
    something)

will not, because it's not a macro definition, and

  (def make-macro (name)
    `(mac ,name body (pr "stuff")))

will not recognize the quasiquoted macro definition, even though it takes a body parameter.

The name of each macro found in this way will be added to the &lispwords variable.  Then, with auto-indentation, the macro

  (mac foo body
    bar)

will indent like

  (foo a
    b
    c)

instead of

  (foo a
       b
       c)

(Sorry; that probably doesn't look right in a non-fixed-width font.)  This can be useful for macros that you define to be syntactic forms, much like how, say, looping constructs are defined in Arc itself.

- g:arc_highlight_lispwords

If nonzero, every word in the &lispwords variable will highlight as though it were syntax.  The highlighting is updated every time you write to the file.  This can be useful in conjunction with g:arc_bodops, so that after you write the macro

  (mac my-each (x xs . body)
    ...do stuff...)

each occurrence of "my-each" will be highlighted & indented just like the "each" macro.  You can even add words you want to be highlighted & indented by going

  :setl lispwords+=foo

This lispword will then persist across file-writes, even if you've not defined a "foo" macro.

Most of these extra features are useless without the accompanying Arc syntax highlighter, so you probably want to use it if you use these features.

EXAMPLE:

You could put

  let g:arc_detect_atstrings=1
  let g:arc_bodops=1
  let g:arc_highlight_lispwords=1

in your .vimrc, and when using the Arc syntax highlighter you can test, say, news.arc and see that:

  - atstrings are highlighted, as there is a positive declaration at the top of the source
  
  - macros like "adop" and "edop" are highlighted & auto-indented as lispwords

  - but the macro "newsop" isn't highlighted or auto-indented, because its rest parameter is named "args".  So, you can :setl lw+=newsop and :w to see "newsop" become highlighted.
 
install details
1.  If you haven't already, create your user runtime directory.  You typically use the first item of the runtimepath option (see :h runtimepath).  For example, using Vim's default runtimepath option on Unix:

  mkdir ~/.vim

2.  If you haven't already, create directories inside of this called "syntax" and "ftplugin".  Continuing the last example:

  mkdir ~/.vim/syntax
  mkdir ~/.vim/ftplugin

3.  Download and extract the contents of this package (arc-vim.tar.gz).  Inside, there will be two directories: "syntax" and "ftplugin".  Inside each of these are their own respective "arc.vim" files.  Place each in their respective directories that you have from step 2 (i.e., place the package's "syntax/arc.vim" into "~/.vim/syntax/arc.vim" and "ftplugin/arc.vim" into "~/.vim/ftplugin/arc.vim").

4.  Now you can start Vim and enable the syntax highlighter.  Make sure to first do
  
  :syntax enable

or
  
  :syntax on

if you don't already have this in your .vimrc or such.  Then, you can do things like

  :setf arc

to start highlighting the current buffer.

5.  You can also start Vim and enable the filetype-plugin.  Make sure to first do
  
  :filetype plugin on

if you don't already have this in your .vimrc or such.  Then you can use commands like

  :setf arc

to start using the Arc filetype-plugin.  For more info, see :h ftplugins

6.  If you want Vim to automatically turn on Arc syntax highlighting / use the Arc ftplugin, you can add

  au BufRead,BufNewFile *.arc setf arc

to your .vimrc (or ftdetect/arc.vim or what-have-you; see :h new-filetype).

Note that if, like me, you have any existing sessions/views for a particular Arc file, Vim might be setting the filetype to whatever it was in the view (see :h views-sessions), which means that the above won't seem to have an effect!  You can delete the view or manually :setf arc on such files, then all should be fine.
 

rate this script Life Changing Helpful Unfulfilling 
script versions (upload new version)

Click on the package to download.

package script version date Vim version user release notes
arc-vim.tar.gz 1.1 2009-08-06 7.0 AJ V Changes for the Arc 3.1 release ( see http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254 ):
  - Use & as ssyntax instead of +
  - Updated the changed/new Arc identifiers
  - Removed the o from formatoptions (I found it annoying; if you set it in
    your .vimrc or such, you can still use it)
  - Updated the regexp for g:arc_bodops; now it will only match definitions
    found at the beginning of a line, to avoid macro-defining-macro mismatches
    (not a perfect solution, but catches the common cases)
arc-vim.tar.gz 1.0 2009-07-24 7.2 AJ V Initial upload
ip used for rating: 107.23.85.179

If you have questions or remarks about this site, visit the vimonline development pages. Please use this site responsibly.
Questions about Vim should go to the maillist. Help Bram help Uganda.
   
Vim at Github