.. -*- mode: rst -*-

==========
Quickstart
==========


Pygments comes with a wide range of lexers for modern languages which are all
accessible through the pygments.lexers package. A lexer enables Pygments to
parse the source code into tokens which are passed to a formatter. Currently
formatters exist for HTML, LaTeX and ANSI sequences.


Example
=======

Here is a small example for highlighting Python code:

.. sourcecode:: python

    from pygments import highlight
    from pygments.lexers import PythonLexer
    from pygments.formatters import HtmlFormatter

    code = 'print "Hello World"'
    print highlight(code, PythonLexer(), HtmlFormatter())

which prints something like this:

.. sourcecode:: html

    <div class="highlight">
    <pre><span class="k">print</span> <span class="s">&quot;Hello World&quot;</span></pre>
    </div>


A CSS stylesheet which contains all CSS classes possibly used in the output can be
produced by:

.. sourcecode:: python

    print HtmlFormatter().get_style_defs('.highlight')

The argument is used as an additional CSS selector: the output may look like

.. sourcecode:: css

    .highlight .k { color: #AA22FF; font-weight: bold }
    .highlight .s { color: #BB4444 }
    ...


Options
=======

The `highlight()` function supports a fourth argument called `outfile`, 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.

Lexers and formatters both support options. They are given to them as keyword
arguments either to the class or to the lookup method:

.. sourcecode:: python

    from pygments import highlight
    from pygments.lexers import get_lexer_by_name
    from pygments.formatters import HtmlFormatter

    lexer = get_lexer_by_name("python", stripall=True)
    formatter = HtmlFormatter(linenos=True, cssclass="source")
    result = highlight(code, lexer, formatter)

This makes the lexer strip all leading and trailing whitespace from the input
(`stripall` option), lets the formatter output line numbers (`linenos` option),
and sets the wrapping ``<div>``'s class to ``source`` (instead of
``highlight``).

For an overview of builtin lexers and formatters and their options, visit the
`lexer <lexers.txt>`_ and `formatters <formatters.txt>`_ lists.


Lexer and formatter lookup
==========================

If you want to lookup a built-in lexer by its alias or a filename, you can use
one of the following methods:

.. sourcecode:: pycon

    >>> from pygments.lexers import (get_lexer_by_name,
    ...     get_lexer_for_filename, get_lexer_for_mimetype)

    >>> get_lexer_by_name('python')
    <pygments.lexers.PythonLexer>

    >>> get_lexer_for_filename('spam.rb')
    <pygments.lexers.RubyLexer>

    >>> get_lexer_for_mimetype('text/x-perl')
    <pygments.lexers.PerlLexer>

All these functions accept keyword arguments; they will be passed to the lexer
as options.

A similar API is available for formatters: use `get_formatter_by_name()` and
`get_formatter_for_filename()` from the `pygments.formatters` module
for this purpose.


Guessing lexers
===============

If you don't know the content of the file, or you want to highlight a file
whose extension is ambiguous, such as ``.html`` (which could contain plain HTML
or some template tags), use these functions:

.. sourcecode:: pycon

    >>> from pygments.lexers import guess_lexer, guess_lexer_for_filename

    >>> guess_lexer('#!/usr/bin/python\nprint "Hello World!"')
    <pygments.lexers.PythonLexer>

    >>> guess_lexer_for_filename('test.py', 'print "Hello World!"')
    <pygments.lexers.PythonLexer>

`guess_lexer()` passes the given content to the lexer classes' `analyze_text()`
method and returns the one for which it returns the highest number.

All lexers have two different filename pattern lists: the primary and the
secondary one. The `get_lexer_for_filename()` function only uses the primary
list, whose entries are supposed to be unique among all lexers.
`guess_lexer_for_filename()`, 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
`guess_lexer()` is used with the matching lexers.

As usual, keyword arguments to these functions are given to the created lexer
as options.    


Command line usage
==================

You can use Pygments from the command line, using the `pygmentize` script::

    $ pygmentize test.py

will highlight the Python file test.py using ANSI escape sequences
(a.k.a. terminal colors) and print the result to standard output.

To output HTML, use the ``-f`` option::

    $ pygmentize -f html -o test.html test.py

to write an HTML-highlighted version of test.py to the file test.html.

The stylesheet can be created with::

    $ pygmentize -S default -f html > style.css

More options and tricks and be found in the `command line referene <cmdline.txt>`_.