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The easiest way to create a lexer for a custom language plugin is to use JFlex. IDEA contains adapter classes (FlexLexer and FlexAdapter) that adapt JFlex lexers to the IDEA lexer API. The Plugin Development package includes a patched version of JFlex 1.4.1 (tools/jflex) and lexer skeleton file (tools/jflex/idea-flex.skeleton) which can be used for creating lexers compatible with FlexAdapter. The patched version of JFlex provides a new command line option --charat which changes the JFlex generated code so that it works with the IDEA skeleton (which passes the source data for lexing as a CharSequence and not as an array of characters).
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For developing lexers using JFlex, the JFlex Support plugin can be useful. It provides syntax highlighting and other useful features for editing JFlex files. |
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