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idlwave: Octals and Highlighting

 
 4.1.6 Octals and Highlighting
 -----------------------------
 
 A rare syntax highlighting problem results from an extremely unfortunate
 notation for octal numbers in IDL: ‘"123’.  This unpaired quotation mark
 is very difficult to parse, given that it can be mixed on a single line
 with any number of strings.  Emacs will incorrectly identify this as a
 string, and the highlighting of following lines of code can be
 distorted, since the string is never terminated.
 
    One solution to this involves terminating the mistakenly identified
 string yourself by providing a closing quotation mark in a comment:
 
        string("305B) + $ ;" <--- for font-lock
         ' is an Angstrom.'
 
 A far better solution is to abandon this notation for octals altogether,
 and use the more sensible alternative IDL provides:
 
         string('305'OB) + ' is an Angstrom.'
 
 This simultaneously solves the font-lock problem and is more consistent
 with the notation for hexadecimal numbers, e.g., ‘'C5'XB’.
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