(xemacs.info)Syntax Entry

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27.5.1 Information About Each Character
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The syntax table entry for a character is a number that encodes six
pieces of information:

   * The syntactic class of the character, represented as a small
     integer

   * The matching delimiter, for delimiter characters only (the
     matching delimiter of `(' is `)', and vice versa)

   * A flag saying whether the character is the first character of a
     two-character comment starting sequence

   * A flag saying whether the character is the second character of a
     two-character comment starting sequence

   * A flag saying whether the character is the first character of a
     two-character comment ending sequence

   * A flag saying whether the character is the second character of a
     two-character comment ending sequence

   The syntactic classes are stored internally as small integers, but
are usually described to or by the user with characters.  For example,
`(' is used to specify the syntactic class of opening delimiters.  Here
is a table of syntactic classes, with the characters that specify them.

`-'
     The class of whitespace characters.  Please don't use the formerly
     advertised  , which is not supported by GNU Emacs.

`w'
     The class of word-constituent characters.

`_'
     The class of characters that are part of symbol names but not
     words.  This class is represented by `_' because the character `_'
     has this class in both C and Lisp.

`.'
     The class of punctuation characters that do not fit into any other
     special class.

`('
     The class of opening delimiters.

`)'
     The class of closing delimiters.

`''
     The class of expression-adhering characters.  These characters are
     part of a symbol if found within or adjacent to one, and are part
     of a following expression if immediately preceding one, but are
     like whitespace if surrounded by whitespace.

`"'
     The class of string-quote characters.  They match each other in
     pairs, and the characters within the pair all lose their syntactic
     significance except for the `\' and `/' classes of escape
     characters, which can be used to include a string-quote inside the
     string.

`$'
     The class of self-matching delimiters.  This is intended for TeX's
     `$', which is used both to enter and leave math mode.  Thus, a
     pair of matching `$' characters surround each piece of math mode
     TeX input.  A pair of adjacent `$' characters act like a single
     one for purposes of matching.

`/'
     The class of escape characters that always just deny the following
     character its special syntactic significance.  The character after
     one of these escapes is always treated as alphabetic.

`\'
     The class of C-style escape characters.  In practice, these are
     treated just like `/'-class characters, because the extra
     possibilities for C escapes (such as being followed by digits)
     have no effect on where the containing expression ends.

`<'
     The class of comment-starting characters.  Only single-character
     comment starters (such as `;' in Lisp mode) are represented this
     way.

`>'
     The class of comment-ending characters.  Newline has this syntax in
     Lisp mode.

   The characters flagged as part of two-character comment delimiters
can have other syntactic functions most of the time.  For example, `/'
and `*' in C code, when found separately, have nothing to do with
comments.  The comment-delimiter significance overrides when the pair of
characters occur together in the proper order.  Only the list and sexp
commands use the syntax table to find comments; the commands
specifically for comments have other variables that tell them where to
find comments.  Moreover, the list and sexp commands notice comments
only if `parse-sexp-ignore-comments' is non-`nil'.  This variable is set
to `nil' in modes where comment-terminator sequences are liable to
appear where there is no comment, for example, in Lisp mode where the
comment terminator is a newline but not every newline ends a comment.