Highlight - a universal sourcecode to formatted text converter

highlight [acefghiklnopqrstuvwzABCDEHIKLOPRSTXYVWZ] [-i input file] [-o output file] [-S syntax] [-O outdir] [-B wildcard] [-H language] [-t num] [-c style_outfile] [-e style_infile] [-s style] [-D data dir] [-E add. data dir] [-F format] [-u encoding] [input files]

Highlight converts sourcecode to HTML, XHTML, RTF, LaTeX, TeX or XSL-FO. There are 65 colour themes available. Highlight recognizes keywords, numbers, strings, comments, symbols and preprocessor directives. It supports Action Script, ADA 95, Agda, AMPL, Aspect, Assembler, Amtrix, Avenue, (G)AWK, Bash, BlitzBasic, BMS, C, C++, C#, ClearBasic, Clipper, Cobol, CSS, DOS-Batch, Eiffel, Euphoria, Express, Felix, Frink, Forth, Fortran, Haskell, HTML, HTTPD, IDL, INI, IO, Jasmin, Java, JavaScript, JSP, LaTeX, LDIF, Lotus Script, Lua, Make, Maya, Matlab, MaxScript, Modelica, Modula 3, Nasal, Nice, Oberon, Object Script, OCaml, Pascal, Paradox, PATROL, Perl, PHP, Pike, PL/1, PL/SQL, POV Ray, Progress, Python, Relax NG, Rexx, Ruby, Small, SML, Spin, Sybase, Squirrel, SuperX++, VHDL, Visual Basic, XML and more.

It's easily possible to enhance highlight's database of programming languages and colour themes. See the README file for details.

-B, --batch-recursive=<wildcard>

convert all files matching the wildcard (uses recursive search)

-D, --data-dir=<path>

set path to highlight data directory

-E, --add-data-dir=<path>

set path to an additional data directory, which is searched first

-H, --help-int=<lng>

print help in given language <lng>=[en, es, de, fr]

-h, --help

print this help

-i, --input=<file>

name of input file

-o, --output=<file>

name of output file

-O, --outdir=<output directory>

name of output directory

-P, --progress

print progress bar in batch mode

-S, --syntax=<type>

define type of source code, necessary if input filename is unknown

-v, --verbose

print debug info to stderr

-p, --list-langs

list installed language definitions

-q, --quiet

supress progress info in batch mode

-w, --list-themes

list installed themes

--force

generate output if language type is unknown

--version

print version and copyright info

-A, --ansi

generate ANSI terminal escape sequences

-L, --latex

generate LaTeX file

-R, --rtf

generate RTF file

-T, --tex

generate TeX file

-X, --xhtml

generate XHTML 1.1 file

-Y, --xsl-fo

generate XSL-FO file (experimental)

-Z, --xml

generate XML file

-I, --include-style

include style definition in output

-e, --style-infile=<file>

name of file to be included in style-outfile

-c, --style-outfile=<file>

name of style definition file

-f, --fragment

omit header and footer of the output document

-F, --format-style=<style>

reformat output in given style. <style>=[ansi, gnu, kr, java, linux]

-j, --line-number-width

line number width incl. left padding

-k, --font=<font>

defines font (specific to output format)

-K, --font-size=<num?>

defines font size (specific to output format)

-l, --linenumbers

print line numbers in output file

-m, --line-number-start=<cnt>

start line numbering with cnt (assumes -l)

-s, --style=<style name>

define highlighting style which should be used

-t --replace-tabs=<num>

replace tabs by num spaces

-u, --encoding=<enc>

define output encoding which matches input file encoding; omit encoding information if enc=NONE

-V, --wrap-simple

wrap long lines without indenting function parameters and statements

-W, --wrap

wrap long lines (use with caution)

-z, --zeroes

fill leading space of line numbers with zeroes

-a, --anchors

attach anchors to lineneumbers (HTML only)

-C, --print-index

print index file with links to output files

--ordered-list

print lines as ordered list items (assumes -l)

-b, --babel

disable Babel package shorthands

-r, --replace-quotes

replace double quotes by \dq (assumes -f is set)

-g, --fop-compatible

generate FO for Apache FOP (see README)

If no in- or output files are specified, stdin and stdout will be used for in- or output. -t will be ignored if -F is set. -i and -o will be ignored if -b or -B is set. -c will be ignored if the output format does not support referenced style files. HTML will be generated, if no other output format is given Style definitions are stored in highlight.css (HTML, XHTML) or highlight.sty (LaTeX, TeX) if neither -c nor -I is given. Reformatting code will only work with C, C++, C# and java input files.

The converter is not able to recognize mixed code like PHP and JavaScript in one file. RTF output will ignore background colour information. The wrapping options will cause faulty highlighting of long single line comments and directives.

The parsing information of the programming languages is stored in /usr/share/highlight/langDefs/. You may enhance highlight's parsing capabilities by adding more *.lang - files to this directory. You can also define other directories with -D, or add search paths with -E. Documentation files are stored in /usr/share/doc/highlight/ , configuration files in /etc/highlight/.

Single file conversion:

highlight -o hello.html -i hello.c

highlight -o hello.html hello.c

highlight -o hello.html -S c < hello.c

highlight -S c < hello.c > hello.html

Note that a file highlight.css is created in the current directory.

Batch file processing:

highlight -X -B '*.cpp' -O /home/you/html_code/

converts all *.cpp files in the current directory and its subdirectories to xhtml files, and stores the output in /home/you/html_code.

highlight -L * -O /home/you/latex_code/

converts all files to LaTeX, stored in /home/you/latex_code/.

Use --quiet to improve performance of batch file processing (recommended for usage in shell scripts).

Use highlight -A <yourfile> | less -R to display a source file in a terminal.

Andre Simon <andre.simon1@gmx.de>

README file and highlight webpage at http://www.andre-simon.de/.