Rewrite Variable Logic From Scratch

Open
#137 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
20/100
Issue type
Refactor
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
powershell
Domain
devtools

Research direction

No files or tests are named. Start by reviewing the scope and rule questions in this issue and linked issues #127, #129–#133, and #138; done requires a defined grammar rewrite covering the listed variable forms and highlighting cases, but the planned format is still TBD.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement project

There are multiple issues with variables as they stand now in the grammar some of which have been reported and some of which haven't:

  • Punctuation in variables with properties and methods isn't scoped correctly: #131
  • The sigil for a sub-expression is not handled the same way as the sigil on a variable: #132
  • Some language variables like $_, $$, $? are treated differently depending on context and are currently scoped incorrectly: #133
  • Properties and method highlighting breaks when the variable has an array position specified: #127
  • Multiple legal characters break variable highlighting ($Var?Iable), and special automatic variables like $<drive letter>:folder don't highlight correctly: #49

There are also questions about the correct scope of properties and methods (mentioned #131) and questions about to what extent the grammar should be concerned with user expectation/"most themes" vs either correctness (subjective) or consistency (with which languages?) (#130 and #129).

Background

The following cases need to be covered with as little repetition / complexity as possible:

  • Regular variables with and without scopes, properties, array position, methods, etc.
  • Variables contained within strings.
  • Variables contained within sub-expressions with and without scopes, properties, array position, methods, etc.
  • Variables in and out of strings and sub-expressions when using the ${Variable} format again with and without scopes, properties, array position, methods, etc.

The following gotchas need to be taken in to account:

  • Which special characters are legal within ${Variable} syntax vs $Variable syntax.
  • International characters (\p{L} vs [A-z]`).
  • Access of variables through splatting where the sigil is @.
  • Separate scoping for constants, automatic variables, language variables, etc.
  • $$ where "$$Hello" needs to show $$ as the variable and Hello as part of the double quoted string and other similar oddities.
  • Lots of others...

Planned Format/Rules

??? tbd

Re: Scope selection -> See #138

Dominant language
PowerShell
Stars
151
Forks
55
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from PowerShell/EditorSyntax

All issues in PowerShell/EditorSyntax

Similar issues

More DevTools issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.