Syntax Highlighting

All Gherkin keywords are highlighted using colour and bold font

The commonly used set of user story keywords (As a, I want to, So that) can be entered in the Feature title section like below:

Tip - Instead of “So that” you can use “In order to” so that you can start with the why

Tip - user story keywords don’t need to be at the start of the line and you can use either lower or upper case as needed

Tip - you can omit the 'to’ part in the “I want to“ keyword and in the “As a” keyword you can enter either “As a“ or “As an”

Simple parameters (those that are on the same line as the step keyword) can be highlighted by simply wrapping them in single or double quotes

Scenario Outline Parameters

<> delimited step parameters which are used as part of Scenario Template or Scenario Outline are highlighted automatically in orange

Tip - use autocompletion support to quickly populate Examples table header section with the names of the parameters that you have used in parameterized steps above. Simply press 'Ctrl+Space' to bring up the auto completion menu

Tip - scenario outline parameters are also supported inside tabular step parameters

Doc strings are highlighted in purple colour

Tip - you can also use 'backtick' characters instead of quotes if required

If you enter 'xml' after the opening chars of a multi line string then any XML that you enter before the closing chars are automatically syntax highlighted

Tags are highlighted in grey colour

Comments are highlighted in grey colour

Tip - comments spanning several lines can be conveniently folded

A comment prefix character '#' is used followed by ‘Q`:' or 'A:’ to highlight questions and answers respectively. Or the more elaborate version: “Question:“ and “Answer:”

Tip - you can turn off the showing of gutter icons on the left via an editor menu option shown below

If there is any text that according to the Cucumber Gherkin syntax does not belong to any of the Feature file elements, then it is underlined in red and an error icon is shown in the gutter

Note that such errors to be highlighted the 'Errors' option in the Gutter options drop down menu must be turned on as shown below