5 Easy Ways to Display Syntax Highlighted PHP Code
Posted on December 5, 2007 in Function by Jeff Starr
A great to way to share your PHP code with visitors is to display it directly in the browser with automatically generated syntax highlighting. Here is a screenshot showing an example of syntax-highlighted PHP code:
![[ Screenshot: PHP code snippet in syntax-highlighted form ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2007/misc-chunks/syntax-highlight.gif "The colors applied to the various code elements are automatically generated via the PHP engine")
Displaying your PHP scripts in syntax-highlighted form is an excellent way to share source code details directly with your readers. Rather than zipping the script and requiring users to download, unzip, and open the file in an editor, displaying your code directly saves you and your visitors time, effort, and hassle. Plus, in my opinion, looking at syntax-highlighted PHP code is a beautiful sight, day or night ;)
In this article, we will explore 5 different ways to display the syntax-highlighted source of your PHP scripts. Three of the methods are designed to highlight entire files, and the other two are aimed directly at highlighting individual strings of PHP code. All of these methods employ PHP’s built-in syntax highlighter.