GNU bug report logs - #18379
24.3.93; Bash font lock: pretty inconsistent treatment of `` and $()

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Message #19 received at 18379-close <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita <at> gmail.com>
Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab <at> suse.de>, 18379-close <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 occitan <at> esperanto.org
Subject: Re: bug#18379: 24.3.93; Bash font lock: pretty inconsistent treatment
 of `` and $()
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 12:52:17 -0400

Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita <at> gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Andreas,
>
>> They have different quoting rules, with `...` using rules similar to
>> double quotes, whereas $(...) is a fully nesting construct.
>
> True, but both contains bash code for a subshell which is far from being
> an uninterpreted string. IMO the important distintion to highlight is
> "intepreted code" vs "uninterpreted string", not the ability to nest vs
> the inability to nest (due to different quoting rules).
>
> I've been checking how other editors do this. vim works the way I'm
> proposing, while scintilla based editors do it the emacs way. Regarding
> my second observation before, neither vim nor scintilla treat the
> leading word in a command substution in any special way, which I think
> is sensible.

I think the conclusion here is that there are two ways to do this, and
the way we currently do this is not obviously wrong.  Thus, I think we
are unlikely to make any changes here at this point.

These days, I would probably look into `bash-ts-mode` as an alternative.

I'm therefore closing this bug report.

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