[rcfox]

> What does prevent me from understanding code is 5-10 nested if blocks and insane logic checks without commenting.

What's worse is multiple nested levels of #ifdef. Not only is it hard to tell how the code flows, but you can't even be sure it's all being compiled!

I work with code like this so frequently that I actually got around to learning elisp so that I could write a function in Emacs to highlight the nested levels of #ifdef. I have a black background, so each nested level increases the brightness.

(I should really get around to pulling that code off of my computer at work and putting it up for everyone to use...)

[shabble]

That code sounds pretty interesting, especially if it's adaptable to arbitrary open/close sequences

    if (.*?) { 

vs

    #ifdef .* ... #else ... #endif

I'd be interested in seeing it, even if it's a pastebin/gist dump that needs some cleanup.

[rcfox]

Unfortunately, it's only for #if .* ... #el.* ... #endif. I didn't want to write that much of a parser, so I just push the line number onto a stack if I see a line like /^\s*#if/.

I guess Emacs is using some kind of parser to do syntax highlighting, right? I wonder if it's possible to tap into that...

[shabble]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does, although I've never poked deeply enough / understood elisp well enough to know exactly how it does it.

Swapping out those regexen you have wouldn't be too much of a challenge, I don't think, at least for a first shot at it.

I'm more interested in the general structure of managing the counter, applying the various faces to lines, etc.

My email is in profile if you want someone to attempt to clean it up a bit (insofar as I'm capable of doing so) :)