HP Chemstation GC/MS Macro Language

Provides syntax highlighting support and other features for Hewlet-Packard/Agilent Chemstation Macro language for GC-GC/MS systems. Covers MSD Chemstation and Enviroquant versions up to 2010.

Features

Syntax Highlighting

• Complete variable list (reserved and system)
• Complete function list
• Custom keyword highlighting rules for all commands
• Includes "Enhanced" and "Drug Analysis" variations

Auto-Indentation of Name, If, and While sections.

Region Folding now supported. Use !region and !endregion comments to fold as many lines as desired.

Requirements

VSCode 1.46.0 or later.

Extension Settings

Includes file association for .mac filetypes.

Recommendations

Scope colors are determined by theme, while scope names are assigned by the language extension. Scope names were chosen to provide meaningful color contrast between statements, but sometimes a theme publisher will use the same color for multiple important scopes. For example, control keywords such as if and while could be the same color as support functions like dim and open. It is recommended to use a theme that differentiates between macros, functions, variables, and control keywords to make best use of syntax highlighting.

For reference, the themes used in the previews are, respectively:

• Material Theme by Mattia Astorino
• Syntax by XephAlpha
• One Dark Pro by binaryify

However, feel free to use any theme you like!

Formatting Special Variables

Both system and reserved variables have their own unique scopes. It's possible to apply a global setting just for these tokens to allow them to stand out.

Use Ctrl+Shift+P to open the Command Palette and search for Preferences: Open Settings (JSON). Inside your settings.json file, add the following code:

"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "textMateRules": [
        {
            "scope": "variable.other.reserved.chemmac",
            "settings": {
                "fontStyle": "bold"
            }
        },
        {
            "scope": "variable.other.system.chemmac",
            "settings": {
                "fontStyle": "bold"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Other font styles and foreground colors are also available. More information about customizing token styles can be found here.

Known Issues

All entities declared following the remove command are given the entity.name token. It is impossible to distinguish between macros and variables in this statement line and therefore everything will be colored the same.

The Chemstation command processor supports abbreviated calls to commands and macros. Occasionally, you will see abbreviated commands colored as macros such as draw called by dr. Improvements to include some of the commonly used abbreviations are underway, but it may be impossible to include all of them. It is recommended to use the full name of all macros and command functions wherever possible.

To submit bugs or issues please reach out through the Marketplace or through GitHub.