Help for syntax highlighting

Marco Bimbös

I did a little bit of research in Google and the forum, but can’t find a sollution so far.

I often work with files like these:

hh:mm:ss;Fehlernr.;Index;aktiv;CPU;Beschreibung;Par1;Par2;Par3;Par4;Information;
76.533:22:14;21;1;0;A;“Error1”;1;0;21001;322;2;
76.533:22:14;21;1;0;B;“Error1”;1;0;21001;322;4;
76.533:19:51;21;1;0;A;“Error1”;1;0;21001;5337;2;
76.533:19:40;21;1;0;A;“Error1”;1;0;21001;5337;2;
76.533:19:21;21;1;0;A;“Error1”;1;0;21001;5337;2;
76.533:18:46;31;7;0;A;“Error2”;0;0;31007;503;2;
76.533:18:33;31;7;0;A;“Error2”;0;0;31007;503;2;
60:12:02;26;4;0;A;“Error3”;0;0;26004;0;2;
60:12:02;26;3;0;A;“Error3”;0;0;26003;2110;2;
42:58:01;21;1;0;B;“Error1”;1;0;21001;322;4;
42:57:20;21;1;0;A;“Error1”;1;0;21001;322;2;
42:15:00;4;1;0;B;“Error4”;-32;-32000;4001;2597752;4;
42:15:00;4;1;0;A;“Error4”;-32;-32000;4001;2597752;2;

It would be really helpful if I could split these strings in different blocks and also colour them differently, to make it more readable.
Best would be, if it would also stretch it out a little bit, that it becomes a little bit like a table.
Is that possible with the UDL?

my proposal

Claudia Frank

Hello Marco Bimbös,

afaik, UDL cannot help you here.
What could be done, in regards to formatting, is to use the Python Script plugin and a little script.
I’have written here what needs to be done first.

Regarding colorizing, it could be done but I don’t think a python script would be a good solution.
From what I understand, colorizing is done when you activate a new document, repeatedly but
a script runs once, normally.
If you use callbacks like BUFFERACTIVATED then you need to take care that there is a logical
way when the script should be executed and when not.
Lastly, the addStyledText function is not that fast. Colorizing 100 lines of your provided sample
takes up to 3 seconds.

So, a python script could look like this

a = [[] for x in editor.getLine(0).split(";")]   # create a list of lists using the first line in the doc

def ssv_to_list(cont, l_num, tot_lines):        # convert semicolon separated values to a list
    cont = cont.split(";") 
    for n in range(len(cont)): 
        a[n].append(cont[n].replace("\r\n", ""))
    
editor.forEachLine(ssv_to_list)     # well, self explaining I guess

aLens = [max([len(x) for x in a[y]]) for y in range(len(a))]    # find out what the biggest string is

def format_line(l_num):        # format the lines
    txt = ''
    spacer = 1     # can be used to increace space between columns
    for x in range(len(aLens) - 1):   # loop
        if x == 4 :     # your example used one left justified column
            txt += "{0:<{1}}".format(' ',spacer) + a[x][l_num].ljust(aLens[x])
        else:      # right justified
            txt += a[x][l_num].rjust(aLens[x]+spacer)
    return txt + '\r\n'   # add line breaks

notepad.new()     # open a new doc
big_txt = ''

for l in range(len(a[0])):  # loop through the list of lists saved in ssv_to_list
    big_txt += format_line(l)     # create the new formatted text

editor.addText(big_txt)     # add it to editor.

Cheers
Claudia

Scott Sumner

Nice job Claudia. I actually tried this out. The only (slight) negative is the x==4 part, which binds it to the data set rather tightly (but that was what the user wanted). I could see this being used to do a quick reformat on CSV data with a few tweaks. Again, good job.

Claudia Frank

Hello Scott,

thank you for your kind words, you are right, this script, as it is, is only useful
if you have a data set similar to the one Marco has.
For those who want to have a more general solution replace the format_line
function with this one

def format_line(l_num):
    txt = ''
    spacer = 1
    for x in range(len(aLens) - 1):
        txt += a[x][l_num].rjust(aLens[x]+spacer)
    return txt + '\r\n'

Cheers
Claudia