Add support for syntax highlighting

[42wim]

Description of the new feature/enhancement

Add support for syntax highlighting specific words like MobaXterm has:

This makes finding errors/issues much easier and it's something that I immediately miss when using terminal :-)

[DHowett]

This'll make a nice extension in the future. It's adjacent to search v2, but different enough that it warrants a separate explanation.

[DHowett]

Link: #4000

[zhaone]

Is there any update about this feature? I still can not find any config that enable custom keywords highlight.

[kolbasky]

I can double that. The only reason i still use moba is because of syntax highlight. In iTerm2 on mac it can be achieved with "highlight trigger", which accepts regex and colors. Maybe it would be a good start - no built-in syntax highlighting for different languages, but give users means to set up their own regexes.

[zadjii-msft]

@kolbasky FWIW I'm tracking "do something on a regex" over in #5916. I'm not sure that would scale to the scope of this issue - the OP looks like it'd have a lot of different matches, and terminal-side recoloring is Hard. But it's along the same vein.

[zhaone]

@kolbasky can't agree more. I'll give up moba if this feature was developed.

[StrangePeanut]

Following. Currently using an overpriced paid alternative but would drop it in a heartbeat if this feature were introduced in Windows Terminal.

[zadjii-msft]

@StrangePeanut So, I've kinda got a spec for "regex matching + colorize the matched text" over in #15700. Would something like:

"triggers":[
    {
        "match": "[Ee][Rr][Rr][Oo][Rr]",
        "action": "experimental.colorSelection",
        "foreground": "#ff0000"
    },
]

work for your use case? (just trying to figure out how exactly you're using the "overpriced alternative" 😉 )

[StrangePeanut]

@zadjii-msft Oh wow that's brilliant, thanks! This would fully cover my use case actually.

[MagikEh]

This is exactly what I've been hoping to have, an effectively client side grcat, a program that takes stdout, runs it through a regex filter and colourizes output.

[ReK42]

:+1: for this feature. There are various tools to do this for individual command output, but nothing I can see that can do it for the entire interactive session without messing up how stdin/out/err and control sequences work.

Perhaps use the TextMate language specification for highlighting rules (*.tmLanguage)? This is widely supported in text/code editors, including VS Code, and has a large library of rules already.

[hanyce]

any update？

[joryvd]

Would also really like this feature!

[clillies]

I would love this feature. Especially when a bit tired, to be able to specify a pattern (see how easy that was to spot), any pattern would do (even though I prefer regexp), and make the line or the match have a certain format. A bit like Emacs highlight-lines-matching-regexp or highlight-regexp.

[Wimterbourne]

I would very much like this feature also.

[jonny64]

it seems like no one term app like alacritty wezterm has this feature, except mobaxterm

[jacob-roldan]

it seems like no one term app like alacritty wezterm has this feature, except mobaxterm

In Tabby with plugin highlight, you can have different colors for different words

[AutonomousCat]

+1

[JoseGonzalez84]

This feature will be very valuable to Windows Terminal users; please consider excluding this topic from the Icebox milestone.