— Variable: font-lock-defaults

This variable is set by major modes, as a buffer-local variable, to specify how to fontify text in that mode. It automatically becomes buffer-local when you set it. The value should look like this:

          (keywords [keywords-only [case-fold
           [syntax-alist [syntax-begin other-vars...]]]])
     

The first element, keywords, indirectly specifies the value of font-lock-keywords which directs search-based fontification. It can be a symbol, a variable or a function whose value is the list to use for font-lock-keywords. It can also be a list of several such symbols, one for each possible level of fontification. The first symbol specifies how to do level 1 fontification, the second symbol how to do level 2, and so on. See Levels of Font Lock.

The second element, keywords-only, specifies the value of the variable font-lock-keywords-only. If this is non-nil, syntactic fontification (of strings and comments) is not performed. See Syntactic Font Lock.

The third element, case-fold, specifies the value of font-lock-keywords-case-fold-search. If it is non-nil, Font Lock mode ignores case when searching as directed by font-lock-keywords.

If the fourth element, syntax-alist, is non-nil, it should be a list of cons cells of the form (char-or-string . string). These are used to set up a syntax table for syntactic fontification (see Syntax Table Functions). The resulting syntax table is stored in font-lock-syntax-table.

The fifth element, syntax-begin, specifies the value of font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function. We recommend setting this variable to nil and using syntax-begin-function instead.

All the remaining elements (if any) are collectively called other-vars. Each of these elements should have the form (variable . value)—which means, make variable buffer-local and then set it to value. You can use these other-vars to set other variables that affect fontification, aside from those you can control with the first five elements. See Other Font Lock Variables.