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Zsh Syntax Highlighting VS Pygments

Compare Zsh Syntax Highlighting VS Pygments and see what are their differences

Zsh Syntax Highlighting logo Zsh Syntax Highlighting

Fish shell like syntax highlighting for Zsh.

Pygments logo Pygments

Generic syntax highlighter suitable for use in code hosting, forums, wikis or other applications...
  • Zsh Syntax Highlighting Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06
  • Pygments Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-15

Zsh Syntax Highlighting features and specs

  • Improved Readability
    Zsh Syntax Highlighting enhances the readability of command lines by adding color to different parts of the syntax, making it easier for users to identify errors and understand commands at a glance.
  • Error Detection
    The syntax highlighting feature quickly identifies and highlights syntax errors, helping users detect mistakes before running commands and potentially preventing faulty execution.
  • Intuitive Command Line Experience
    By color-coding commands and syntax elements, users have a visual cue about what parts of the command line might need attention, creating a more intuitive command-line experience.
  • Customization
    Users can customize the colors and styles used for syntax highlighting, allowing for a personalized experience that can fit with different themes and preferences.

Possible disadvantages of Zsh Syntax Highlighting

  • Performance Overhead
    The additional processing required for syntax highlighting can lead to increased resource consumption. In systems with limited resources, this might impact terminal performance.
  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and customizing syntax highlighting can be complex, requiring users to dive into configuration files and understand Zsh plugins and themes, which may not be straightforward for beginners.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Some themes or plugins may not be fully compatible with zsh-syntax-highlighting, potentially causing conflicts or unexpected behavior.
  • Limited Support for Custom Languages
    While zsh-syntax-highlighting supports many common command-line tools and languages, it may not fully support syntax highlighting for less commonly used languages out-of-the-box, requiring additional customization.

Pygments features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    Pygments supports a broad range of programming languages and file formats, making it highly versatile for developers working in diverse environments.
  • High-Quality Output
    The library produces highly readable and aesthetically pleasing highlighted code, which is crucial for documentation and presentation.
  • Easy Integration
    Pygments is designed to integrate easily with a variety of web frameworks, content management systems, and text editors.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize styles, themes, and output formats to meet specific needs, providing flexibility for different aesthetic requirements.
  • Active Community
    A strong, active community contributes to its continuous development and improvement, ensuring it stays updated with the latest languages and features.

Possible disadvantages of Pygments

  • Performance Overhead
    For large codebases or high-frequency requests, using Pygments can introduce performance overhead, potentially slowing down applications.
  • Dependency Management
    As with any library, integrating Pygments means managing its dependencies and ensuring compatibility with other project components.
  • Complexity in Advanced Use
    While basic usage is straightforward, more advanced features and customizations can introduce complexity, requiring a deeper understanding of the library.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Pygments primarily focuses on syntax highlighting, so additional functionality (like code execution or detailed analysis) has to be handled by other tools or custom development.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Zsh Syntax Highlighting and Pygments)
Customer Feedback
60 60%
40% 40
Documentation
39 39%
61% 61
Documentation As A Service & Tools
App Reviews
63 63%
37% 37

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Pygments should be more popular than Zsh Syntax Highlighting. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Zsh Syntax Highlighting mentions (5)

  • Make the zsh Prompt Go Faster
    Zsh can compile zsh scripts using the builtin zcompile into wordcode. This will have the effect of having faster parsing. The way we use this to get a faster prompt is to explicitly ask zsh to compile certain chunky plugins(think your syntax highlighters and completion plugins) into wordcode. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Finding Terminal Utopia
    Lastly, let’s make what commands we’re running easier to read, using zsh-syntax-highlighting. This script (which must be loaded before the zsh-history-substring-search above) will provide syntax highlighting of commands as you write them. This will help you avoid typos for incorrect commands, and make complex commands easier to read. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Essential Terminal Settings for macOS
    Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • [Question] What are the best plugins for zsh ?
    Two by far the most popular plugins are zsh-syntax-highlighting and zsh-autosuggestions. They are of high quality and quite useful. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Configuração do Windows para desenvolvimento
    Echo "Installing zsh-autosuggestions" Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions Echo "Installing zsh-syntax-highlighting" Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting Echo "Installing asdf" Git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago

Pygments mentions (10)

  • Ask HN: Printing Code to Paper?
    Some starter ideas[0] beyond spacing/line numbers. BNF format is used to describe a programming language. treesitter as a text editor plug in makes use of a language BNF description to be able to know how to parse & format a given lanuage in a text editor (aka pygments[1], gnu source code hightlights, [2] neovim with treesitter[3]). Aka searching google "treesitter work with microsoft notepade" --- [0] :... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Marcel the Shell
    I suspect Pygments will be to your liking. https://pygments.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Blog in django
    It's not clear exactly what you want, but if you mean syntax highlighting, you could use pygments https://pygments.org/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • I'm looking for a way to display live changes to a text file with Python
    Https://pygments.org/ - never tried it though. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Markdown, Asciidoc, or reStructuredText - a tale of docs-as-code
    Sphinx is incredibly powerful and can offer a table of contents, automatic links for functions, automatic code highlighting using Pygments, and other capabilities using built-in or third-party extensions. If you'd like to use (a flavor of) Markdown with Sphinx, you can do so using MyST-parser - a Sphinx and Docutils extension to parse MyST. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Zsh Syntax Highlighting and Pygments, you can also consider the following products

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

Asciidoctor - In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

Docutils - Docutils is an open-source text processing system for processing plaintext documentation into...

pandoc - Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line...

Docusaurus - Easy to maintain open source documentation websites

GitBook - Modern Publishing, Simply taking your books from ideas to finished, polished books.