Mode reference

Types

Types of attributes values in this reference:

Attributes

case_insensitive

type: boolean

Case insensitivity of language keywords and regexps. Used only on the top-level mode.

aliases

type: array

A list of additional names (besides the canonical one given by the filename) that can be used to identify a language in HTML classes and in a call to getLanguage.

className

type: identifier

The name of the mode. It is used as a class name in HTML markup.

Multiple modes can have the same name. This is useful when a language has multiple variants of syntax for one thing like string in single or double quotes.

begin

type: regexp

Regular expression starting a mode. For example a single quote for strings or two forward slashes for C-style comments. If absent, begin defaults to a regexp that matches anything, so the mode starts immediately.

end

type: regexp

Regular expression ending a mode. For example a single quote for strings or “$” (end of line) for one-line comments.

It’s often the case that a beginning regular expression defines the entire mode and doesn’t need any special ending. For example a number can be defined with begin: "\\b\\d+" which spans all the digits.

If absent, end defaults to a regexp that matches anything, so the mode ends immediately (after possibly matching any contains sub-modes).

Sometimes a mode can end not by itself but implicitly with its containing (parent) mode. This is achieved with endsWithParent attribute.

beginKeywords

type: string

Used instead of begin for modes starting with keywords to avoid needless repetition:

{
  begin: '\\b(extends|implements) ',
  keywords: 'extends implements'
}

… becomes:

{
  beginKeywords: 'extends implements'
}

Unlike the keywords attribute, this one allows only a simple list of space separated keywords. If you do need additional features of keywords or you just need more keywords for this mode you may include keywords along with beginKeywords.

endsWithParent

type: boolean

A flag showing that a mode ends when its parent ends.

This is best demonstrated by example. In CSS syntax a selector has a set of rules contained within symbols “{” and “}”. Individual rules separated by “;” but the last one in a set can omit the terminating semicolon:

p {
  width: 100%; color: red
}

This is when endsWithParent comes into play:

{
  className: 'rules', begin: '{', end: '}',
  contains: [
    {className: 'rule', /* ... */ end: ';', endsWithParent: true}
  ]
}

endsParent

type: boolean

Forces closing of the parent mode right after the current mode is closed.

This is used for modes that don’t have an easily expressible ending lexeme but instead could be closed after the last interesting sub-mode is found.

Here’s an example with two ways of defining functions in Elixir, one using a keyword do and another using a comma:

def foo :clear, list do
  :ok
end

def foo, do: IO.puts "hello world"

Note that in the first case the parameter list after the function title may also include a comma. And if we’re only interested in highlighting a title we can tell it to end the function definition after itself:

{
  className: 'function',
  beginKeywords: 'def', end: /\B\b/,
  contains: [
    {
      className: 'title',
      begin: hljs.IDENT_RE, endsParent: true
    }
  ]
}

(The end: /\B\b/ regex tells function to never end by itself.)

endSameAsBegin

type: boolean

Acts as end matching exactly the same string that was found by the corresponding begin regexp.

For example, in PostgreSQL string constants can uee “dollar quotes”, consisting of a dollar sign, an optional tag of zero or more characters, and another dollar sign. String constant must be ended with the same construct using the same tag. It is possible to nest dollar-quoted string constants by choosing different tags at each nesting level:

$foo$
  ...
  $bar$ nested $bar$
  ...
$foo$

In this case you can’t simply specify the same regexp for begin and end (say, "\\$[a-z]\\$"), but you can use begin: "\\$[a-z]\\$" and endSameAsBegin: true.

lexemes

type: regexp

A regular expression that extracts individual lexemes from language text to find keywords among them. Default value is hljs.IDENT_RE which works for most languages.

keywords

type: object

Keyword definition comes in two forms:

• 'for while if else weird_voodoo|10 ... ' – a string of space-separated keywords with an optional relevance over a pipe
• {'keyword': ' ... ', 'literal': ' ... '} – an object whose keys are names of different kinds of keywords and values are keyword definition strings in the first form

For detailed explanation see Language definition guide.

illegal

type: regexp

A regular expression that defines symbols illegal for the mode. When the parser finds a match for illegal expression it immediately drops parsing the whole language altogether.

excludeBegin, excludeEnd

type: boolean

Exclude beginning or ending lexemes out of mode’s generated markup. For example in CSS syntax a rule ends with a semicolon. However visually it’s better not to color it as the rule contents. Having excludeEnd: true forces a <span> element for the rule to close before the semicolon.

returnBegin

type: boolean

Returns just found beginning lexeme back into parser. This is used when beginning of a sub-mode is a complex expression that should not only be found within a parent mode but also parsed according to the rules of a sub-mode.

Since the parser is effectively goes back it’s quite possible to create a infinite loop here so use with caution!

returnEnd

type: boolean

Returns just found ending lexeme back into parser. This is used for example to parse Javascript embedded into HTML. A Javascript block ends with the HTML closing tag </script> that cannot be parsed with Javascript rules. So it is returned back into its parent HTML mode that knows what to do with it.

Since the parser is effectively goes back it’s quite possible to create a infinite loop here so use with caution!

contains

type: array

The list of sub-modes that can be found inside the mode. For detailed explanation see Language definition guide.

starts

type: identifier

The name of the mode that will start right after the current mode ends. The new mode won’t be contained within the current one.

Currently this attribute is used to highlight Javascript and CSS contained within HTML. Tags <script> and <style> start sub-modes that use another language definition to parse their contents (see subLanguage).

variants

type: array

Modification to the main definitions of the mode, effectively expanding it into several similar modes each having all the attributes from the main definition augmented or overridden by the variants:

{
  className: 'string',
  contains: [hljs.BACKSLASH_ESCAPE],
  relevance: 0,
  variants: [
    {begin: /"/, end: /"/},
    {begin: /'/, end: /'/, relevance: 1}
  ]
}

subLanguage

type: string or array

Highlights the entire contents of the mode with another language.

When using this attribute there’s no point to define internal parsing rules like lexemes or keywords. Also it is recommended to skip className attribute since the sublanguage will wrap the text in its own <span class="language-name">.

The value of the attribute controls which language or languages will be used for highlighting:

• language name: explicit highlighting with the specified language
• empty array: auto detection with all the languages available
• array of language names: auto detection constrained to the specified set

skip

type: boolean

Skips any markup processing for the mode ensuring that it remains a part of its parent buffer along with the starting and the ending lexemes. This works in conjunction with the parent’s subLanguage when it requires complex parsing.

Consider parsing PHP inside HTML:

<p><? echo 'PHP'; /* ?> */ ?></p>

The ?> inside the comment should not end the PHP part, so we have to handle pairs of /* .. */ to correctly find the ending ?>:

{
  begin: /<\?/, end: /\?>/,
  subLanguage: 'php',
  contains: [{begin: '/\\*', end: '\\*/', skip: true}]
}

Without skip: true every comment would cause the parser to drop out back into the HTML mode.

disableAutodetect

type: boolean

Disables autodetection for this language.