Syntax highlighting

Some editors also integrate syntax highlighting with other features, such as spell checking or code folding, as aids to editing which are external to the language.

[2] Additionally, data gathered from an eye-tracker during the study suggested that syntax highlighting enables programmers to pay less attention to standard syntactic components such as keywords.

Some text editors can also export the coloured markup in a format that is suitable for printing or for importing into word-processing and other kinds of text-formatting software; for instance as a HTML, colorized LaTeX, PostScript or RTF version of its syntax highlighting.

Called syntax decoration, some editors also display certain syntactical elements in more visually pleasing ways, for example by replacing a pointer operator like -> in source code by an actual arrow symbol (→), or changing text decoration clues like /italics/, *boldface*, or _underline_ in source code comments by an actual italics, boldface, or underlined presentation.

[3][4] It provided advanced language-independent code completion facilities, and unlike modern editors with syntax highlighting, actually made it impossible to create syntactically incorrect programs.

[6] It would highlight different elements of BASIC programs and was implemented in an attempt to make it easier for beginners, especially children, to start writing code.

[7] Later, the Live Parsing Editor (LEXX) written for the VM operating system for the computerization of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1985 was one of the first to use color syntax highlighting.

Its live parsing capability allowed user-supplied parsers to be added to the editor, for text, programs, data file, etc.

Some modern, language-specific IDEs (in contrast to text editors) perform full language parsing which results in very accurate understanding of code.