User Guide

Code coloring 101
Escape characters
The following is a list of escape characters that Dreamweaver supports, along with the strings to
specify them and descriptions of their usage.
Maximum string length
The maximum length allowed for a data string is 100 characters. For example, the following
blockEnd tag contains a wildcard character.
<blockEnd><![CDATA[<!--\s*#BeginEditable\s*"\*"\s*-->]]></blockEnd>
Assuming the optional white space wildcard strings (\s*) are a single space character, which
Dreamweaver generates automatically, then the data string is 26 characters long, plus a wildcard
string (
\*) for the name.
<!-- #BeginEditable "\*" -->
This leaves an editable region name that can be as man y as 74 characters, which is the maximum
of 100 characters minus 26.
Optional whitespace
\s*
This matches zero or more white space or newline characters.
For example,
<!--\s*#include is used to match ASP include
directives whether they have any white space preceding the
#include token or not because either case is valid.
The white space wildcards match any combination of white space
and newline characters.
Required whitespace
\s+
This matches one or more white space or newline characters.
For example,
<!--#include\s+virtual is used to match ASP
include directives with any combination of white space between
#include and virtual. White space must be specified between
these tokens, but it can be any combination of valid white space
characters.
The white space wildcards match any combination of white space
and newline characters.
Escape character Escape
string
Description
Backslash
\\
The backslash character (\) is the code coloring escape character,
so it must be escaped to be specified in a code coloring rule.
White space
\s
This escape character matches any non-visible characters, except
those listed that match the Newline escape character, such as space
and tab characters.
The optional white space and required white space wildcards match
both the white space and newline characters.
Newline
\n
This escape character matches the newline (also known as linefeed)
and carriage-return characters.
Wildcard Escape
string
Description