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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Anyone knows if it's possible to color command line commands as you type them (kind of like an editor)? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I am looking for a syntax highlighter for the terminal. The one I use is called Kitty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

It would make sense for the terminal to handle syntax highlighting since that would match how editors work. But the convention is that the shell handles highlighting, not the terminal. You can check which shell you are running with the command,

$ echo $SHELL

It's done that way because the shell is a running program that is capable of telling the terminal which colors to show (by mixing color escape sequences into text). Compare that to code in an editor which is text, not a running program so the only option is for the editor to handle highlighting[1]. Editors need syntax files to configure highlighting for all the different programming languages, while terminals don't need this because the shell tells them what colors to show.

[1] setting aside the "semantic highlighting" LSP capability - that was invented long after syntax highlighting conventions were established