Syntax highlighting for SKILL in 'VS Code'

Did you know you can set up your VS Code to highlight Syntax from SKILL?

Syntax highlighting, snippets, hover tips, and declaration search are some of the features that can be added to text editors to enhance the coding environment. These features do not change the behavior of the code but make it easier to code and debug issues.

The following image shows a snippet of code with and without highlighting. Microsoft Visual Studio Code, also known as VS Code, is one of the popular text editors. You can do SKILL programming in VS Code due to the third-party extensions. This article talks about how to use SKILL extensions in VS Code.

About Microsoft Visual Studio Code, VS Code

VS Code is a free, lightweight, and open source text editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Max, and Linux. It should not be confused with Visual Studio by Microsoft, though they share some similarities like the name and logo. Visual Studio code feature-rich, straightforward user experience and powerful extensibility has made it top choice for code editors in recent years ahead of Nodepad++ and VIM. See more details about VS Code at https://code.visualstudio.com/.

VS Code allows third parties to develop extensions for many programming language to common file extensions like CSV, passing by markup languages, GUI styling and much more.

Extensions in VS Code

VS Code extensions lets you add languages, debuggers, and tools to different languages to support your development workflow. The extension may provide highlights, snippets, autocomplete with structure templates, code outline, declaration search, and highlighting of errors for example when a variable is not declared. The following image shows autocomplete with a structure template for the 'if' construct in Allegro SKILL. 

How to install Allegro SKILL extension in VS Code 

Allegro SKILL extension is available in VS Code Extension Marketplace. You need to search it and install it for VS Code as follows:

You can browse and install extensions from within VS Code. Bring up the Extensions view by clicking on the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the side of VS Code or using the View > Extensions command (Ctrl+Shift+X).

This will show you a list of the most popular VS Code extensions on VS Code Marketplace.

Search by typing SKILL.

Choose Skill 0.1.1, Syntax highlighting for Cadence Skill.

Click on Install.

You can now open an Allegro SKILL file (.il) in VS Code.