Font ligatures not working properly with C and C++ syntax highlighting

[vittorioromeo]

• VSCode Version: 1.7, 1.8, insiders
• OS Version: Windows 10, Arch Linux x64

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Steps to Reproduce:

1. Set font to "Fira Code" (or any similar font which uses programming ligatures).
2. Enable ligatures with "editor.fontLigatures": true.
3. Write code for a lambda with trailing return type or a -> access to a method.
4. The ligatures are not expanded correctly (see screenshot below).

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Setting the syntax to "Plain Text" makes the ligatures work correctly.

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(This also applies to other ligatures, not only ->.)

(This also applies to C syntax highlighting.)

[siegebell]

This is a partial duplicate of #2870 - the C++ grammar is parsing - and > into separate tokens. If you are using a built-in grammar for C++, you should make a feature request to have -> and other operators parsed as one token.

Or you can use prettify-symbols-mode - see this thread for a discussion on how to make it work for Fira Code.

[siegebell]

Actually, I think this is a bug in the built-in C++ grammar. Commit 5598ee0 ensures that identical tokens are merged, but while - is given scope keyword.operator.c, the grammar incorrectly assigns > scope keyword.operator.comparison.c.

[siegebell]

related: atom/language-c#177

[aeschli]

Thanks @siegebell for the analysis.
Closing as dup of atom/language-c#177