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A comment on Optimizations in Syntax Highlighting. Parent comment

Re:Optimizations in Syntax Highlighting by jbmorgado on Wednesday February 08, 2017 @04:02PM (#13602067)
Thank you, that explains a lot, but now a new doubt came from it:

Why don't we use other text editors grammars that are simpler/quicker to parse in JS? I have no idea on the technicalities, but for instance, Vim or Emacs grammars instead?

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Re:Optimizations in Syntax Highlighting by okdana on Wednesday February 08, 2017 @04:49PM (#13602485)
I can't speak to Emacs, but i know that Vim's syntax definitions are (a) not as powerful as TM's, (b) a nightmare to maintain, and (c) heavily reliant on features specific to Vim's loony regular-expression engine (like variable-width look-around).

My experience is that most syntax highlighters and their definition formats (Scintilla, nano, almost anything that's based on JavaScript) are very limited/naïve compared to TextMate's. It doesn't have to be that way -- TM can certainly be improved upon -- but it is.

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