zsh-syntax-highlighting/docs/highlighters/main.md

zsh-syntax-highlighting / highlighters / main

This is the main highlighter, that highlights:

• Commands
• Options
• Arguments
• Paths
• Strings

This highlighter is active by default.

How to tweak it

This highlighter defines the following styles:

• unknown-token - unknown tokens / errors
• reserved-word - shell reserved words (if, for)
• alias - aliases
• suffix-alias - suffix aliases (requires zsh 5.1.1 or newer)
• builtin - shell builtin commands (shift, pwd, zstyle)
• function - function names
• command - command names
• precommand - precommand modifiers (e.g., noglob, builtin)
• commandseparator - command separation tokens (;, &&)
• hashed-command - hashed commands
• path - existing filenames
• path_pathseparator - path separators in filenames (/); if unset, path is used (default)
• path_prefix - prefixes of existing filenames
• path_prefix_pathseparator - path separators in prefixes of existing filenames (/); if unset, path_prefix is used (default)
• globbing - globbing expressions (*.txt)
• history-expansion - history expansion expressions (!foo and ^foo^bar)
• single-hyphen-option - single hyphen options (-o)
• double-hyphen-option - double hyphen options (--option)
• back-quoted-argument - backquoted expressions (`foo`)
• single-quoted-argument - single quoted arguments ('foo')
• double-quoted-argument - double quoted arguments ("foo")
• dollar-quoted-argument - dollar quoted arguments ($'foo')
• dollar-double-quoted-argument - parameter expansion inside double quotes ($foo inside "")
• back-double-quoted-argument - back double quoted arguments (\x inside "")
• back-dollar-quoted-argument - back dollar quoted arguments (\x inside $'')
• assign - parameter assignments
• redirection - redirection operators (<, >, etc)
• comment - comments, when setopt INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS is in effect (echo # foo)
• arg0 - a command word other than one of those enumrated above (other than a command, precommand, alias, function, or shell builtin command).
• default - everything else

To override one of those styles, change its entry in ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES, for example in ~/.zshrc:

# Declare the variable
typeset -A ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES

# To differentiate aliases from other command types
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES[alias]='fg=magenta,bold'

# To have paths colored instead of underlined
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES[path]='fg=cyan'

# To disable highlighting of globbing expressions
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES[globbing]='none'

The syntax for values is the same as the syntax of "types of highlighting" of the zsh builtin $zle_highlight array, which is documented in the zshzle(1) manual page.

Useless trivia

Forward compatibility.

zsh-syntax-highlighting attempts to be forward-compatible with zsh. Specifically, we attempt to facilitate highlighting command word types that had not yet been invented when this version of zsh-syntax-highlighting was released.

A command word is something like a function name, external command name, et cetera. (See Simple Commands & Pipelines in zshmisc(1) for a formal definition.)

If a new kind of command word is ever added to zsh — something conceptually different than "function" and "alias" and "external command" — then command words of that (new) kind will be highlighted by the style arg0_$kind, where $kind is the output of type -w on the new kind of command word. If that style is not defined, then the style arg0 will be used instead.