Dynamic syntax highlighting

Question

I'm in search of a tool which will allow me to customize dynamic syntax highlight rules :

Examples of static syntax highlighting (most IDEs already do this).

1. Highlight all occurences of the word int as red.

2. Highlight all strings (enclosed in ") in blue.

Examples of DYNAMIC syntax highlighting

1. Given a string of txt that appears > twice, I want it highlighted purple.

2. If I click on a block of text, I would like all blocks of txt on the same file highlighted green.

I'm assuming that someone may have built such a highlighter before, but I can't find anything on the web. Any feedback on how:

1. I can extend an existing project (ideally, I'd like this to be an IDE plugin) to customize my dynamic requirements?

2. In case 1 is not in existence, any templating languages that might be maximally effective for this sort of project ? i.e. any frameworks that highlight text on the fly, dynamically, while enabling editing - that are easily extended.

Answer 1

Emacs (www.gnu.org/s/emacs/) should be able to do this.

Emacs is extremely customizable; you code (e)Lisp functions to make it do what you want. Many of Emacs's language-specific modes do "fixed" highlighting of keywords; you should be able to hijack that machinery and make the highlighting dynamic as interests you. Huge libraries of eLisp code for such modes is available from GNU.