Syntax

Syntax Highlighting

microNeo ships 158 syntax files, covering 100+ languages (Go, Rust, Python, C/C++, JS/TS, HTML, CSS, Shell, …). When you open a file, the language is detected automatically and highlighting is applied.

Detection

Syntax detection is based on two things:

• File extension — the most common case. For example, main.go is detected as Go, app.py as Python.
• First-line header — for scripts without an extension or with an ambiguous extension. For example, a file whose first line is #!/bin/bash is detected as shell.

Custom syntax

If the built-in ones aren't enough (e.g. a new language, a private format, or you want to tweak existing rules), place your custom .yaml syntax file in ~/.config/microNeo/syntax/. It will override the built-in syntax with the same name.

Here is the structure of a syntax file (simplified example):

filetype: mylang

detect:
    filename: "\\.(mylang|my)$"
    header: "^#!.*mylang"

rules:
    - keyword: "\\b(if|else|while|func)\\b"
    - type: "\\b(int|string|bool)\\b"
    - constant.string: '"[^"]*"'
    - comment: "#.*$"

Notes:

• filetype — the syntax name (unique identifier).
• detect — detection rules. filename is a regex matching the extension, header is a regex matching the first line; at least one is required.
• rules — highlighting rules. Each - <highlight-group>: "<regex>" assigns the matched text to a highlight group.
• highlight-group is the token name after color-link in a theme file (e.g. keyword, type, constant.string, comment). So the color of syntax is ultimately decided by the current theme — switch the theme to switch the colors.

For more detailed syntax rules (regions, nesting, subgroups, etc.), refer to micro's native help/colors documentation.