contains 'self' is ambiguous with `variants`

I have a minor issue with http://highlightjs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference.html#variants in combination with self. Here’s an example language

  return {
    contains: [
      {
        className: 'test',
        variants: [
          {
            begin: '<',
            end: '>'
          },
          {
            begin: '\\{',
            end: '\\}'
          }
        ],
        contains: [
          'self'
        ]
      }
    ]
  };

This would match nested pairs of <<>> as well as {{}} - but not the inner part of a mixed form like <{}>. It seems like self refers to specific mode variant.

Sure, I can write two different modes to get this done where every mode contains the respectively other modes plus self. But I think it would be much more simply to have it “full recursive”. Or at least the docs should be more specific at this point.

To get it work, the example language has to be defined this way

  var test1 = {
    className: 'test',
    begin: '<',
    end: '>',
    contains: []
  };
  var test2 = {
    className: 'test',
    begin: '\\{',
    end: '\\}',
    contains: []
  };

  test2.contains.push(test1, 'self');
  test1.contains.push(test2, 'self');

  return {
    contains: [
      test1,
      test2
    ]
  };

Wolfgang

[isagalaev]

@yyyc514 here’s the problem. When you come onto a mode with variants, expanding it produces two independent modes like these:

[ { ..., contains: ['self']}, { ..., contains: ['self']} ]

And by the time the recursive process in compileMode gets to those contains, each 'self' can only refer to one concrete variant of the original mode. I don’t know how to fix it. If you teach expand_mode how to deal with 'self' in contains, it would mean making it recursive? Inside of the already recursive compileMode?

All in all, it’s not something I can actually help with, sorry!

[joshgoebel]

To get it work, the example language has to be defined this way

@WolfgangKluge If you were doing this often or commonly though you’d wrap that up in a nice little helper, so it really wouldn’t be as bad as you’re making it out. I tagged this docs as it wouldn’t hurt to explain this behavior somewhere as you suggested.