World: r3wp

If you want to guarantee progress with my and your examples (and 
better support multichar markup tags) change the last
  any non-markup
to
  any non-markup | skip
and that would do it.

okay, here's a slightly tweaked version that uses a multichar markup 
tag:

        markup-chars: charset "[*_-:---]"
        non-markup: complement markup-chars
        inline-tags: [
            "*" "strong"
            "_" "em"
            "@" "code"
            "--" "small"
        ]

        markup-rule: [
            any non-markup
            any [
                [ a: "*" b: to "*" c: skip d: |
                  a: "_" b: to "_" c: skip d: | 
                  a: "@" b: to "@" c: skip d: |
                  a: "--" b: to "--" c: skip skip d: ] :a (
                    change/part a rejoin [ 
                        "<" select inline-tags copy/part a b ">"
                        copy/part b c 
                        "</" select inline-tags copy/part a b ">"
                    ] d
                ) any non-markup | skip
            ]
            to end
        ]
        parse/all text markup-rule

Your first charset only needs one -

It passes my simple tests, now I need to throw more interesting tests 
in (multiple tags on the same line, nested tags, whatever)

Thanks BrianH, I'll fix that.

Nested tags of the same type won't work at all unless the start and 
end tags are different, and they won't work here without either recursion 
or a an algorythm that does nesting counts. Be careful with that 
because you'd have to update those counts in parens and you can't 
backtrack through parens.

Lucky for me, the rules don't support nested tags of the same type.


* *strong* text* would probably parse as <strong> </strong>strong 
<strong> text</strong>

Note that my last example keeps track of both the start and eng tags, 
even though I don't need to with the markup chars I used.

I need to test for *strong and _emphasized_ text.* (for example)

Yours will test for *strong and _emphasized* text._ as well right 
now (for example)

works beautifully, no changes needed. You guys rule.

The generated html might not be pretty though :)

Pretty comes after I know it works, if at all. :-)

awesome, it even works for "**bold**" text!

and won't touch ***********************************************

Really? The rules look like they'd translate that to <strong></strong> 
repeated many times. It doesn't?

Lemme write a test and see

ah, it turns them into <b></b>pairs

10 - Not OK - Rampant asterisks are usually ignored
Expected <<p>***********************************************</p>>

Got <<p><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><strong></
strong>*</p>

Part of me wants to just ignore it for now and get on to other stuff.

Well, if you want exceptions, you gotta code them in. In this case, 
before the block of your markup rules, as an alternate.

Like this (at the beginning of the any block):
    ["**" any "*"] |

(Be back, off to a class)

Well, I got things behaving by specifying " " at the beginning. It's 
a start.

ah the 2:46:49 post avoided that

with the opt[] block if what followed wan not a well formed marked 
up string

hm. Now I just need to figure out how to allow markup at the start 
of a line. I'll need to look at your code back there.

yay, got it working. It's ugly, but I got it working.

I'm not seeing a good solution to this at the moment, so I thought 
I would ask for help.  I'm working with parse and I want to create 
a new set of grammar rules dynamically based on the inputed grammar. 
 The simplest example I can present is starting with the following 
rule

	b: [19]

and in the end I want to have this.
        w: {}
	newb: [(append w "the b value is 19") 19 (append w newline)]


While I can insert an APPEND that doesn't contain values from the 
original rules into the block very easily, 

insert tail newb [(append w newline)]


I'm not sure of a way to insert a parenthesized APPEND with a string 
that contains info about the block.  I hope this is clear (or even 
possible), but please ask me questions if it is not.

I suppose the question I'm asking is there a way to force the arguments 
of an expression to evaluate without actually evaluating the expression. 
 Taking the aboe example

a: join "the b value is " first b

insert head newb [(append w a)]

where I want to evaluate 'a while ending up with the expression:

insert head newb [(append w "the b value is 19")]


This seems contrary to the nature of first order functions, but I 
just wanted to check.

Excuse me, first - class functions

interesting questions, unfortunately not having time to answer any

a: 19 append/only [] to-paren reduce ['append  'w join "the b value 
is " a]

or

a: 19 append/only [] to-paren compose [append w (join "the b value 
is " a)]

You _just_ beat me to it ...

;-)

Forgot to use /only on first try

Thank you Romano and Ingo

How do you parse for a particular integer value ?

parse [ -1 ] [ integer! ]

but I want

parse [ 1] to fail ...

you can do it as a string:
>> parse form [-1] ["-1"]
== true
>> parse form [1] ["-1"]
== false

but as a block... hmmm

>> parse [-1] [1 1 -1]
== true
>> parse [1] [1 1 -1]
== false

lol
How did you do that? Why does it work? :-)

ah of course. Number of instances (1 1 means exactly 1, right?).

tricky :)

>> parse [1 1 1 1] [1 4 1]
== true
>> parse [1 1 1 1] [1 3 1]
== false

Putting numbers in the rule block indicates number of something. 
So [1 4 1] means 1 to 4 times 1.

Easier to see this way:
>> parse [a a a a] [1 4 'a]
== true
>> parse [a a a a] [1 3 'a]
== false

Shouldn't?
parse [1][1] ;== true

So if you wanna check for exactly one time -1, you write [1 1 -1].

Jaime, when you put a number in, it's the start of a min/max indicator. 
You never type max or what to search for, so it fails.