font-lock-keywords and lines containing comments / quotes

[Erik Iverson]

Hello,

I am trying to learn things about font-lock-mode, and am needing help 
understanding the following behavior.  To see what I am confused about, create a 
buffer in emacs-lisp mode (or just use *scratch*) and define the following:

;; syntax highlight lines that start with a "*" in the current buffer
(font-lock-add-keywords nil
                        '(("^\\*\\{1\\}.*" . font-lock-keyword-face)))


Now, with the above defined, paste (or type out to see the effect in action) the 
following lines starting with * in the same buffer, which will demonstrate what 
I would like to achieve, and what is going wrong...


* this is highlighted, great!
* so is this, until I type a ; comment
* similiar here, until I type a "quote"


As soon as I type the ; or " characters, the previous part of the line becomes 
"normal" and the comment or quote appears as it should.  I would like for the 
initial part of the line to remain highlighted though.

Obviously I am missing something simple(?) here, but I am having a hard time 
figuring out how the typical major-modes (e.g., emacs-lisp) handle this case. 
Any hints?

Hopefully this was clear! I am using Emacs 23 under Linux.

Best Regards,
Erik Iverson