zsh-syntax-highlighting/highlighters/regexp

zsh-syntax-highlighting / highlighters / regexp

This is the regexp highlighter, that highlights user-defined regular expressions. It's similar to the pattern highlighter, but allows more complex patterns.

How to tweak it

To use this highlighter, associate regular expressions with styles in the ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_REGEXP associative array, for example in ~/.zshrc:

typeset -A ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_REGEXP
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_REGEXP+=('\bsudo\b' fg=123,bold)

This will highlight "sudo" only as a complete word, i.e., "sudo cmd", but not "sudoedit"

The syntax for values is the same as the syntax of "types of highlighting" of the zsh builtin $zle_highlight array, which is documented in the zshzle(1) manual page.

See also: regular expressions tutorial, zsh regexp operator =~ in the zshmisc(1) manual page

Cautions to BSD-based platform users

In BSD-based platform such as macOS, the regex metacharacters with leading backslash (\) such as \b, \w, etc. are not supported.

So if you want something like the above example, you should use [[:<:]](matches the beginning of a word) with [[:>:]](matches the end of a word). The complete example would be like:

typeset -A ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_REGEXP
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_REGEXP+=('[[:<:]]sudo[[:>:]]' fg=123,bold)

For other metacharacters, consider using POSIX ERE instead.