<![CDATA[User Defined Language]]>Hello, I am currently trying to make my User Defined Language highlight some words depending on the context using delimiters but one of my delimiters ended up overlapping the other. I wanted to make different styles based on the parenthesis, like () and [] is one style and (] and [) is another style. The words in these (), [], [) and (] would also turned into that color based on the parenthesis. Therefore, I could not get the result I wanted. Is there a way to get what I am trying to achieve?

What I am trying to achieve:

[words] or (words) => would be in orange color
0ffc25c8-b126-44d1-aa45-0a71bbf9b981-image.png
(words] or [words) => would be in green color
83f1a37a-ff0e-4ab2-9ee0-917ef166468d-image.png
But the result i got was

(words] or [words] ended up being orange color
[words] and (words) were not affected
e8117dd7-c63c-4ae4-b750-9b98a15c537a-image.png

]]>https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/24902/user-defined-languageRSS for NodeSun, 14 Jun 2026 19:35:03 GMTSun, 10 Sep 2023 12:31:38 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to User Defined Language on Sun, 10 Sep 2023 18:45:59 GMT]]>@Eileen-Ling ,

With just the User Defined Language (UDL) syntax, what you want is probably not achievable.

However, if you install the EnhanceAnyLexer plugin (using Plugins > Admin tool), then you can make sure your file has the right UDL active, then use Plugins > EnhanceAnyLexer > Enhance Current Language to edit the plugin’s config file. You can then define foreground color changes using “0xBBGGRR = regex” pairs.

32d726da-3676-466c-b50b-0f889bb555b6-image.png

[udf]
; color each word, 0x66ad1 is the color used, see the description above for more information on the color coding.
0x0080FF = \([^)\\]]*?\)
0x0080FF = \\[[^)\\]]*?\\]
0x00FF80 = \([^)\\]]*?\\]
0x00FF80 = \\[[^)\\]]*?\)
; check in the respective styler xml if the following IDs are valid
excluded_styles = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,20,21,22,23

In my example, I defined four regular expressions: two will match the balanced `` and (...); the other two match the imbalanced [...) and (...]

If you don’t want it to match multiline, change each of those four regex to have \r\n right after the ^, so that it doesn’t look for parenthesized text that spans across newline characters.

note: mine used [udf] as the header, because I was in an unnamed UDL. If you follow my instructions above, yours will have [YourUdlNameHere] instead.

]]>https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/89178https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/89178Sun, 10 Sep 2023 18:45:59 GMT