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Activating Regular Expression Syntax Coloring

Explore how to enable regular expression syntax coloring in Visual Studio 2022 by using the StringSyntax attribute in C#. Understand how to apply this feature to string constants to improve code clarity and utilize IntelliSense support for regex patterns and date formats.

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If we use Visual Studio 2022 as our code editor, then we probably noticed that when passing a string value to the Regex constructor, we see color syntax highlighting, as shown in the figure:

Regular expression color syntax highlighting when using the Regex constructor
Regular expression color syntax highlighting when using the Regex constructor

Syntax coloring for regular expression

Why does this string get syntax coloring for regular expressions when most string values do not? Let’s find out:

Step 1: Right-click in the new constructor, select “Go To Implementation,” and note the string parameter named pattern is decorated with an attribute named StringSyntax that has the string constant ...