VS Code does not italicize text when it is quoted

[quanticle]

• VS Code version: 1.24.1
• OS: Ubuntu 18.04

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a markdown file
2. Add the following text: *"quoted emphasis"*

Expected result: *"quoted emphasis"*

Actual result: *"quoted emphasis"*

This occurs on the latest release and preview builds.

[quanticle]

This might be related to problems rendering bold and italics when they are adjacent, but I'm not sure.

[quanticle]

I think the issue is in how we detect the opening. According to line 317 of markdown.tmLanguage.base.yaml, the expression used to detect the start of an italicized block is (\*\b|\b_)(?=\S). However, if I'm reading the reference on JS word boundaries correctly, single and double quotes don't appear to qualify as word boundaries.

I tried several other sequences:

• */foo/*
• *(bar)*
• *$hello$*

None of those italicize in VSCode either, even though Github and other editors, such as Atom, italicize them, which seems to confirm my hypothesis that \b is too restrictive when detecting the start of an italicized block. However, I'm not sure what the correct set of characters is. For example, do we want to italicize *<baz>*?

[tanhakabir]

Can't repro anymore in stable 1.53.2