The SPAN Tag
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## The SPAN Tag

The `SPAN` rule, which must be placed inside a `RULES` tag, highlights text between a start and end string. The start and end strings are specified inside child elements of the `SPAN` tag. The following attributes are supported:

- `TYPE` - The token type to highlight the span with. See the section called “Token Types” for a list of token types.

- `AT_LINE_START` - If set to `TRUE`, the span will only be highlighted if the start sequence occurs at the beginning of a line.

- `AT_WHITESPACE_END` - If set to `TRUE`, the span will only be highlighted if the start sequence is the first non-whitespace text in the line.

- `AT_WORD_START` - If set to `TRUE`, the span will only be highlighted if the start sequence occurs at the beginning of a word.

- `DELEGATE` - text inside the span will be highlighted with the specified ruleset. To delegate to a ruleset defined in the current mode, just specify its name. To delegate to a ruleset defined in another mode, specify a name of the form ``mode`::`ruleset``. Note that the first (unnamed) ruleset in a mode is called “MAIN”.

- `MATCH_TYPE` - Controls how the start and end of the sequence will be highlighted. See the section called “The MATCH_TYPE Attribute” for more information.

- `ESCAPE` - specifies a character sequence for escaping characters. The first character following the escape sequence is not considered as input for syntax highlighting, thus being highlighted with rule's token.

- `NO_LINE_BREAK` - If set to `TRUE`, the span will not cross line breaks.

- `NO_WORD_BREAK` - If set to `TRUE`, the span will not cross word breaks.

Note that the `AT_LINE_START`, `AT_WHITESPACE_END` and `AT_WORD_START` attributes can also be used on the `END` element.

Here is a `SPAN` that highlights Java string literals, which cannot include line breaks:

    <SPAN TYPE="LITERAL1" NO_LINE_BREAK="TRUE">
      <BEGIN>"</BEGIN>
      <END>"</END>
    </SPAN>

Here is a `SPAN` that highlights Java documentation comments by delegating to the “JAVADOC” ruleset defined elsewhere in the current mode:

    <SPAN TYPE="COMMENT2" DELEGATE="JAVADOC">
      <BEGIN>/**</BEGIN>
      <END>*/</END>
    </SPAN>

Here is a `SPAN` that highlights HTML cascading stylesheets inside `<STYLE>` tags by delegating to the main ruleset in the CSS edit mode:

    <SPAN TYPE="MARKUP" DELEGATE="css::MAIN">
      <BEGIN>&lt;style&gt;</BEGIN>
      <END>&lt;/style&gt;</END>
    </SPAN>

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