Feature Request: Syntax Highlight 'script:' and 'shell:' blocks as scripts

[MillironX]

It would be extremely helpful to have script and shell blocks syntax highlighted in the proper language rather than as string literals.

Expected Behavior

Multi-line strings at the end of a process, those within an if block, and those marked as script: or shell: should have syntax highlighting matching their language. Without any label, these should be highlighted as a shell script, but a shebang would change the highlighting of that block to match the indicated language (e.g. a block starting with #!/usr/bin/env perl would receive Perl syntax highlighting). In the case of a shell block, the ! variable placeholder should receive variable highlighting distinct from the target language.

Current Behavior

End-process strings, script blocks and shell blocks are all highlighted as string literals. The only highlighting that takes place within these blocks occurs when using curly bracket variable syntax (i.e. ${var}). No distinction is made at all for the ! variable placeholder regardless of curly brackets.

Possible Implementation

A short-term fix would be to replace multi-line strings with shellscript as an embedded language. This would impede the use of multi-line strings elsewhere, but IMHO this tradeoff is worth it. This wouldn't allow for changing the language based on shebang, though.

In the longer-term, semantic highlighting might be able to highlight blocks according to shebang, and parse which are simple multi-line strings and which are code.

I don't know how/if DSL2 affects this behavior.

[ewels]

Came here to make the same issue after seeing this twitter post (and this thread below it).

Hey Phil!
Not sure if what I did will apply to you, but I followed the steps outlined in the section “Injection grammars” in this guide.

I created the TCSS grammar that you can see here: https://github.com/Textualize/tcss-vscode-extension/tree/main/syntaxes
And then I created the python.injection.json grammar that hooks the TCSS grammar into Python.

I've wanted this feature for years but never realised that it was a possibility until now.

[rodrigogiraoserrao]

I'm the OP of the linked Twitter post. Just wanted to say I'm available to give some pointers, if needed, but I'm not an expert on these matters. I essentially just followed the instructions in the extension guide that was also linked above :)

[edmundmiller]

edmundmiller/nextflow-mode#15 (comment)

Might work with https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.anycode 🤔

[edmundmiller]

Also would give Nextflow support for Zed @mashehu