Pyments

Pygments is a Python library for syntax highlighting. It provides a large collection of lexers for programming languages and other text formats, along with output formatters for rendering highlighted code. Although commonly known as Pygments, it is sometimes misspelled as Pyments.

The library is implemented in Python and is designed to be embedded in other Python applications or used directly from the command line. It is widely used in documentation systems and static site generators to display source code with color. The architecture centers on three concepts: lexers, which tokenize input; formatters, which convert tokens to the desired output; and styles, which map token types to colors.

Pygments supports many languages and output formats, including HTML, CSS, LaTeX, RTF, and ANSI terminal colors. It integrates with projects such as Sphinx, Read the Docs, Django, and various static site tools to provide consistent syntax highlighting. A command-line tool named pygmentize exposes the highlighting capability without writing Python code.

Installation is straightforward via Python's package manager: pip install pygments. The project is open source and distributed under a BSD-style license, with development hosted on its official repository. Developers can extend Pygments by contributing new lexers, formatters, or styles.

Usage example (brief): highlight('def foo(): pass', PythonLexer(), HtmlFormatter()) returns HTML containing syntax-highlighted code. Pygments thus serves as a versatile, extensible solution for code highlighting across environments.