35.4 Syntax Properties

When the syntax table is not flexible enough to specify the syntax of a language, you can use syntax-table text properties to override the syntax table for specific character occurrences in the buffer. See section 32.19 Text Properties.

The valid values of syntax-table text property are:

syntax-table

If the property value is a syntax table, that table is used instead of the current buffer's syntax table to determine the syntax for this occurrence of the character.

(syntax-code . matching-char)

A cons cell of this format specifies the syntax for this occurrence of the character. (see section 35.8 Syntax Table Internals)

nil

If the property is nil, the character's syntax is determined from the current syntax table in the usual way.

Variable: parse-sexp-lookup-properties

If this is non-nil, the syntax scanning functions pay attention to syntax text properties. Otherwise they use only the current syntax table.