Just#

A JavaScript lexer and syntax highlighter for Gleam!

Just is a JavaScript lexer and syntax highlighter written in Gleam. The lexer is based on glexer, allowing you to convert JavaScript source code into tokens. There is also an API which allows you to highlight JavaScript code using ansi colours, html or a custom format. Heavily inspired by contour.

gleam add just@2

import just

pub fn main() {
  let code = "console.log('Hello, world!');"

  let lexer = just.new(code) |> just.strict_mode
  // Lex syntax tokens for parsing or other uses
  let #(tokens, errors) = just.tokenise(lexer)
  let assert [] = errors
  parse_js(tokens)

  // Highlight with ansi codes to print in the terminal
  let highlighted = just.highlight_ansi(code)
  io.println(highlighted)

  // Render to html to show in the browser
  let html = just.highlight_html(code)
  io.println("<pre><code>" <> html <> "</code></pre>")

  // Convert to "highlighting tokens" to highlight in some other way
  let highlight_tokens = just.highlight_tokens(code)
  highlight_tokens_some_other_way(highlight_tokens)
}

Further documentation can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/just.

Missing features#

The Just lexer should be able to accurately lex most valid JavaScript programs, but there are a few things it is missing:

• Proper backtracking for Regular Expressions. Currently the lexer uses the previously lexed token to determine whether to lex a / character as a division operator or a regular expression. This means it can fail in some edge-cases.
• Lexing of full-unicode identifiers. JavaScript supports more than just ASCII characters to make up its identifiers. Currently, Just doesn't support non-ASCII characters in identifiers.
• Lexing identifier escape-sequences. Similarly, JavaScript allows unicode escape sequences as part of identifiers (e.g. let \u0065 = 10;). This is currently not supported by Just.