.. -*- mode: rst -*-

======================
Command Line Interface
======================

You can use Pygments from the shell, provided you installed the `pygmentize`
script::

    $ pygmentize test.py
    print "Hello World"

will print the file test.py to standard output, using the Python lexer
(inferred from the file name extension) and the terminal formatter (because
you didn't give an explicit formatter name).

If you want HTML output::

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

As you can see, the -l option explicitly selects a lexer. As seen above, if you
give an input file name and it has an extension that Pygments recognizes, you can
omit this option.

The ``-o`` option gives an output file name. If it is not given, output is
written to stdout.

The ``-f`` option selects a formatter (as with ``-l``, it can also be omitted
if an output file name is given and has a supported extension).
If no output file name is given and ``-f`` is omitted, the
`TerminalFormatter` is used.

The above command could therefore also be given as::

    $ pygmentize -o test.html test.py

To create a full HTML document, including line numbers and stylesheet (using the
"emacs" style), highlighting the Python file ``test.py`` to ``test.html``::

    $ pygmentize -O full,style=emacs -o test.html test.py


Options and filters
-------------------

Lexer and formatter options can be given using the ``-O`` option::

    $ pygmentize -f html -O style=colorful,linenos=1 -l python test.py

Be sure to enclose the option string in quotes if it contains any special shell
characters, such as spaces or expansion wildcards like ``*``. If an option
expects a list value, separate the list entries with spaces (you'll have to
quote the option value in this case too, so that the shell doesn't split it).

Since the ``-O`` option argument is split at commas and expects the split values
to be of the form ``name=value``, you can't give an option value that contains
commas or equals signs.  Therefore, an option ``-P`` is provided (as of Pygments
0.9) that works like ``-O`` but can only pass one option per ``-P``. Its value
can then contain all characters::

    $ pygmentize -P "heading=Pygments, the Python highlighter" ...

Filters are added to the token stream using the ``-F`` option::

    $ pygmentize -f html -l pascal -F keywordcase:case=upper main.pas

As you see, options for the filter are given after a colon. As for ``-O``, the
filter name and options must be one shell word, so there may not be any spaces
around the colon.


Generating styles
-----------------

Formatters normally don't output full style information.  For example, the HTML
formatter by default only outputs ``<span>`` tags with ``class`` attributes.
Therefore, there's a special ``-S`` option for generating style definitions.
Usage is as follows::

    $ pygmentize -f html -S colorful -a .syntax

generates a CSS style sheet (because you selected the HTML formatter) for
the "colorful" style prepending a ".syntax" selector to all style rules.

For an explanation what ``-a`` means for `a particular formatter`_, look for
the `arg` argument for the formatter's `get_style_defs()` method.


Getting lexer names
-------------------

*New in Pygments 1.0.*

The ``-N`` option guesses a lexer name for a given filename, so that ::

    $ pygmentize -N setup.py

will print out ``python``.  It won't highlight anything yet.  If no specific
lexer is known for that filename, ``text`` is printed.


Getting help
------------

The ``-L`` option lists lexers, formatters, along with their short
names and supported file name extensions, styles and filters. If you want to see
only one category, give it as an argument::

    $ pygmentize -L filters

will list only all installed filters.

The ``-H`` option will give you detailed information (the same that can be found
in this documentation) about a lexer, formatter or filter. Usage is as follows::

    $ pygmentize -H formatter html

will print the help for the HTML formatter, while ::

    $ pygmentize -H lexer python

will print the help for the Python lexer, etc.


A note on encodings
-------------------

*New in Pygments 0.9.*

Pygments tries to be smart regarding encodings in the formatting process:

* If you give an ``encoding`` option, it will be used as the input and
  output encoding.

* If you give an ``outencoding`` option, it will override ``encoding``
  as the output encoding.

* If you don't give an encoding and have given an output file, the default
  encoding for lexer and formatter is ``latin1`` (which will pass through
  all non-ASCII characters).

* If you don't give an encoding and haven't given an output file (that means
  output is written to the console), the default encoding for lexer and
  formatter is the terminal encoding (`sys.stdout.encoding`).


.. _a particular formatter: formatters.txt