<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Introduction and Quickstart — Pygments</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-color: #f2f2f2;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
font-family: 'Georgia', serif;
color: #111;
}
#content {
background-color: white;
padding: 20px;
margin: 20px auto 20px auto;
max-width: 800px;
border: 4px solid #ddd;
}
h1 {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 40px;
color: #09839A;
}
h2 {
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 30px;
color: #C73F00;
}
h1.heading {
margin: 0 0 30px 0;
}
h2.subheading {
margin: -30px 0 0 45px;
}
h3 {
margin-top: 30px;
}
table.docutils {
border-collapse: collapse;
border: 2px solid #aaa;
margin: 0.5em 1.5em 0.5em 1.5em;
}
table.docutils td {
padding: 2px;
border: 1px solid #ddd;
}
p, li, dd, dt, blockquote {
font-size: 15px;
color: #333;
}
p {
line-height: 150%;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-top: 10px;
}
hr {
border-top: 1px solid #ccc;
border-bottom: 0;
border-right: 0;
border-left: 0;
margin-bottom: 10px;
margin-top: 20px;
}
dl {
margin-left: 10px;
}
li, dt {
margin-top: 5px;
}
dt {
font-weight: bold;
}
th {
text-align: left;
}
a {
color: #990000;
}
a:hover {
color: #c73f00;
}
pre {
background-color: #f9f9f9;
border-top: 1px solid #ccc;
border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
padding: 5px;
font-size: 13px;
font-family: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,monospace;
}
tt {
font-size: 13px;
font-family: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,monospace;
color: black;
padding: 1px 2px 1px 2px;
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}
cite {
/* abusing <cite>, it's generated by ReST for `x` */
font-size: 13px;
font-family: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,monospace;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
}
#backlink {
float: right;
font-size: 11px;
color: #888;
}
div.toc {
margin: 0 0 10px 0;
}
div.toc h2 {
font-size: 20px;
}
.syntax .hll { background-color: #ffffcc }
.syntax { background: #ffffff; }
.syntax .c { color: #888888 } /* Comment */
.syntax .err { color: #a61717; background-color: #e3d2d2 } /* Error */
.syntax .k { color: #008800; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword */
.syntax .cm { color: #888888 } /* Comment.Multiline */
.syntax .cp { color: #cc0000; font-weight: bold } /* Comment.Preproc */
.syntax .c1 { color: #888888 } /* Comment.Single */
.syntax .cs { color: #cc0000; font-weight: bold; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Comment.Special */
.syntax .gd { color: #000000; background-color: #ffdddd } /* Generic.Deleted */
.syntax .ge { font-style: italic } /* Generic.Emph */
.syntax .gr { color: #aa0000 } /* Generic.Error */
.syntax .gh { color: #303030 } /* Generic.Heading */
.syntax .gi { color: #000000; background-color: #ddffdd } /* Generic.Inserted */
.syntax .go { color: #888888 } /* Generic.Output */
.syntax .gp { color: #555555 } /* Generic.Prompt */
.syntax .gs { font-weight: bold } /* Generic.Strong */
.syntax .gu { color: #606060 } /* Generic.Subheading */
.syntax .gt { color: #aa0000 } /* Generic.Traceback */
.syntax .kc { color: #008800; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword.Constant */
.syntax .kd { color: #008800; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword.Declaration */
.syntax .kn { color: #008800; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword.Namespace */
.syntax .kp { color: #008800 } /* Keyword.Pseudo */
.syntax .kr { color: #008800; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword.Reserved */
.syntax .kt { color: #888888; font-weight: bold } /* Keyword.Type */
.syntax .m { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number */
.syntax .s { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String */
.syntax .na { color: #336699 } /* Name.Attribute */
.syntax .nb { color: #003388 } /* Name.Builtin */
.syntax .nc { color: #bb0066; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Class */
.syntax .no { color: #003366; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Constant */
.syntax .nd { color: #555555 } /* Name.Decorator */
.syntax .ne { color: #bb0066; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Exception */
.syntax .nf { color: #0066bb; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Function */
.syntax .nl { color: #336699; font-style: italic } /* Name.Label */
.syntax .nn { color: #bb0066; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Namespace */
.syntax .py { color: #336699; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Property */
.syntax .nt { color: #bb0066; font-weight: bold } /* Name.Tag */
.syntax .nv { color: #336699 } /* Name.Variable */
.syntax .ow { color: #008800 } /* Operator.Word */
.syntax .w { color: #bbbbbb } /* Text.Whitespace */
.syntax .mf { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number.Float */
.syntax .mh { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number.Hex */
.syntax .mi { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number.Integer */
.syntax .mo { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number.Oct */
.syntax .sb { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Backtick */
.syntax .sc { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Char */
.syntax .sd { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Doc */
.syntax .s2 { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Double */
.syntax .se { color: #0044dd; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Escape */
.syntax .sh { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Heredoc */
.syntax .si { color: #3333bb; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Interpol */
.syntax .sx { color: #22bb22; background-color: #f0fff0 } /* Literal.String.Other */
.syntax .sr { color: #008800; background-color: #fff0ff } /* Literal.String.Regex */
.syntax .s1 { color: #dd2200; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Single */
.syntax .ss { color: #aa6600; background-color: #fff0f0 } /* Literal.String.Symbol */
.syntax .bp { color: #003388 } /* Name.Builtin.Pseudo */
.syntax .vc { color: #336699 } /* Name.Variable.Class */
.syntax .vg { color: #dd7700 } /* Name.Variable.Global */
.syntax .vi { color: #3333bb } /* Name.Variable.Instance */
.syntax .il { color: #0000DD; font-weight: bold } /* Literal.Number.Integer.Long */
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content">
<h1 class="heading">Pygments</h1>
<h2 class="subheading">Introduction and Quickstart</h2>
<a id="backlink" href="index.html">« Back To Index</a>
<div class="toc">
<h2>Contents</h2>
<ul class="contents">
<li><a href="#architecture">Architecture</a></li>
<li><a href="#example">Example</a></li>
<li><a href="#options">Options</a></li>
<li><a href="#lexer-and-formatter-lookup">Lexer and formatter lookup</a></li>
<li><a href="#guessing-lexers">Guessing lexers</a></li>
<li><a href="#command-line-usage">Command line usage</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- -*- mode: rst -*- -->
<p>Welcome to Pygments! This document explains the basic concepts and terms and
gives a few examples of how to use the library.</p>
<div class="section" id="architecture">
<h3>Architecture</h3>
<p>There are four types of components that work together highlighting a piece of
code:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>A <strong>lexer</strong> splits the source into tokens, fragments of the source that
have a token type that determines what the text represents semantically
(e.g., keyword, string, or comment). There is a lexer for every language
or markup format that Pygments supports.</li>
<li>The token stream can be piped through <strong>filters</strong>, which usually modify
the token types or text fragments, e.g. uppercasing all keywords.</li>
<li>A <strong>formatter</strong> then takes the token stream and writes it to an output
file, in a format such as HTML, LaTeX or RTF.</li>
<li>While writing the output, a <strong>style</strong> determines how to highlight all the
different token types. It maps them to attributes like "red and bold".</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="example">
<h3>Example</h3>
<p>Here is a small example for highlighting Python code:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">highlight</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.lexers</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">PythonLexer</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.formatters</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">HtmlFormatter</span>
<span class="n">code</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'print "Hello World"'</span>
<span class="k">print</span> <span class="n">highlight</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">code</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">PythonLexer</span><span class="p">(),</span> <span class="n">HtmlFormatter</span><span class="p">())</span>
</pre></div>
<p>which prints something like this:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="nt"><div</span> <span class="na">class=</span><span class="s">"highlight"</span><span class="nt">></span>
<span class="nt"><pre><span</span> <span class="na">class=</span><span class="s">"k"</span><span class="nt">></span>print<span class="nt"></span></span> <span class="nt"><span</span> <span class="na">class=</span><span class="s">"s"</span><span class="nt">></span><span class="ni">&quot;</span>Hello World<span class="ni">&quot;</span><span class="nt"></span></pre></span>
<span class="nt"></div></span>
</pre></div>
<p>As you can see, Pygments uses CSS classes (by default, but you can change that)
instead of inline styles in order to avoid outputting redundant style information over
and over. A CSS stylesheet that contains all CSS classes possibly used in the output
can be produced by:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="k">print</span> <span class="n">HtmlFormatter</span><span class="p">()</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get_style_defs</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'.highlight'</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
<p>The argument to <cite>get_style_defs</cite> is used as an additional CSS selector: the output
may look like this:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="nc">.highlight</span> <span class="nc">.k</span> <span class="p">{</span> <span class="k">color</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="m">#AA22FF</span><span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">font-weight</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="k">bold</span> <span class="p">}</span>
<span class="nc">.highlight</span> <span class="nc">.s</span> <span class="p">{</span> <span class="k">color</span><span class="o">:</span> <span class="m">#BB4444</span> <span class="p">}</span>
<span class="o">...</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="options">
<h3>Options</h3>
<p>The <cite>highlight()</cite> function supports a fourth argument called <cite>outfile</cite>, it must be
a file object if given. The formatted output will then be written to this file
instead of being returned as a string.</p>
<p>Lexers and formatters both support options. They are given to them as keyword
arguments either to the class or to the lookup method:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">highlight</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.lexers</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">get_lexer_by_name</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.formatters</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">HtmlFormatter</span>
<span class="n">lexer</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">get_lexer_by_name</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"python"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">stripall</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">formatter</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">HtmlFormatter</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">linenos</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">cssclass</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">"source"</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">result</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">highlight</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">code</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">lexer</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">formatter</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
<p>This makes the lexer strip all leading and trailing whitespace from the input
(<cite>stripall</cite> option), lets the formatter output line numbers (<cite>linenos</cite> option),
and sets the wrapping <tt class="docutils literal"><div></tt>'s class to <tt class="docutils literal">source</tt> (instead of
<tt class="docutils literal">highlight</tt>).</p>
<p>Important options include:</p>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt><cite>encoding</cite> <span class="classifier-delimiter">:</span> <span class="classifier">for lexers and formatters</span></dt>
<dd>Since Pygments uses Unicode strings internally, this determines which
encoding will be used to convert to or from byte strings.</dd>
<dt><cite>style</cite> <span class="classifier-delimiter">:</span> <span class="classifier">for formatters</span></dt>
<dd>The name of the style to use when writing the output.</dd>
</dl>
<p>For an overview of builtin lexers and formatters and their options, visit the
<a class="reference external" href="./lexers.html">lexer</a> and <a class="reference external" href="./formatters.html">formatters</a> lists.</p>
<p>For a documentation on filters, see <a class="reference external" href="./filters.html">this page</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="lexer-and-formatter-lookup">
<h3>Lexer and formatter lookup</h3>
<p>If you want to lookup a built-in lexer by its alias or a filename, you can use
one of the following methods:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.lexers</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="p">(</span><span class="n">get_lexer_by_name</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="gp">... </span> <span class="n">get_lexer_for_filename</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">get_lexer_for_mimetype</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="n">get_lexer_by_name</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'python'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="go"><pygments.lexers.PythonLexer></span>
<span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="n">get_lexer_for_filename</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'spam.rb'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="go"><pygments.lexers.RubyLexer></span>
<span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="n">get_lexer_for_mimetype</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'text/x-perl'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="go"><pygments.lexers.PerlLexer></span>
</pre></div>
<p>All these functions accept keyword arguments; they will be passed to the lexer
as options.</p>
<p>A similar API is available for formatters: use <cite>get_formatter_by_name()</cite> and
<cite>get_formatter_for_filename()</cite> from the <cite>pygments.formatters</cite> module
for this purpose.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="guessing-lexers">
<h3>Guessing lexers</h3>
<p>If you don't know the content of the file, or you want to highlight a file
whose extension is ambiguous, such as <tt class="docutils literal">.html</tt> (which could contain plain HTML
or some template tags), use these functions:</p>
<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">pygments.lexers</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">guess_lexer</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">guess_lexer_for_filename</span>
<span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="n">guess_lexer</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'#!/usr/bin/python</span><span class="se">\n</span><span class="s">print "Hello World!"'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="go"><pygments.lexers.PythonLexer></span>
<span class="gp">>>> </span><span class="n">guess_lexer_for_filename</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'test.py'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'print "Hello World!"'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="go"><pygments.lexers.PythonLexer></span>
</pre></div>
<p><cite>guess_lexer()</cite> passes the given content to the lexer classes' <cite>analyse_text()</cite>
method and returns the one for which it returns the highest number.</p>
<p>All lexers have two different filename pattern lists: the primary and the
secondary one. The <cite>get_lexer_for_filename()</cite> function only uses the primary
list, whose entries are supposed to be unique among all lexers.
<cite>guess_lexer_for_filename()</cite>, however, will first loop through all lexers and
look at the primary and secondary filename patterns if the filename matches.
If only one lexer matches, it is returned, else the guessing mechanism of
<cite>guess_lexer()</cite> is used with the matching lexers.</p>
<p>As usual, keyword arguments to these functions are given to the created lexer
as options.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="command-line-usage">
<h3>Command line usage</h3>
<p>You can use Pygments from the command line, using the <cite>pygmentize</cite> script:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ pygmentize test.py
</pre>
<p>will highlight the Python file test.py using ANSI escape sequences
(a.k.a. terminal colors) and print the result to standard output.</p>
<p>To output HTML, use the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">-f</span></tt> option:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ pygmentize -f html -o test.html test.py
</pre>
<p>to write an HTML-highlighted version of test.py to the file test.html.
Note that it will only be a snippet of HTML, if you want a full HTML document,
use the "full" option:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ pygmentize -f html -O full -o test.html test.py
</pre>
<p>This will produce a full HTML document with included stylesheet.</p>
<p>A style can be selected with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">-O</span> <span class="pre">style=<name></span></tt>.</p>
<p>If you need a stylesheet for an existing HTML file using Pygments CSS classes,
it can be created with:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ pygmentize -S default -f html > style.css
</pre>
<p>where <tt class="docutils literal">default</tt> is the style name.</p>
<p>More options and tricks and be found in the <a class="reference external" href="./cmdline.html">command line reference</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
<!-- generated on: 2011-01-03 18:05:48.867231
file id: quickstart -->
</html>
