How to highlight (colorize) the syntax of configuration files (like .ini or .conf)?

Question

I need to highlight the syntax of files containing lines with parameters and their values in LaTeX. Let's say I have a following file:

# some comment
parameter1 = value of parameter1
parameter2 = some another value
# and so on ...

Is it possible to colorize it with 3 colors: one for comments, one for parameter names and one for their values?

Answer 1

Here is a ConTeXt solution, in case someone is interested. The vim module uses the vim editor to provide syntax highlighting, which has support for a huge number of languages, so there is no need to create your own parsing style.

\usemodule[vim]

\definevimtyping[INI][syntax=dosini]


\starttext
\startINI
# some comment
parameter1 = value of parameter1
parameter2 = some another value
# and so on ...
\stopINI
\stoptext

which gives

The vim module automatically caches the result, so there is no considerable performance penalty.

Answer 2

Just to give you a starting point I made the following MWE to show the possibilities of package listings. The first example shows how to use an existing language in package listings, the second example shows how you can define a new language kurt to be used with package listings for highlighting the code.

%http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/72837/how-to-highlight-colorize-the-syntax-of-configuration-files-like-ini-or-con
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{xcolor,showframe}

\lstdefinestyle{ConfigFiles}{% define own style
  language={[LaTeX]TeX},
  basicstyle=\small\ttfamily,
  linewidth=0.9\linewidth,
  breaklines=true,
  keywordstyle=\color{blue}\bfseries,
  identifierstyle=\color{magenta},
  commentstyle=\color{cyan},
  backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!10},
  tabsize=2,
  morekeywords = {parameter},
}

\lstdefinelanguage{kurt}{% new language for listings
  morekeywords={parameter1,parameter2,wert},
  sensitive=false,
  morecomment=[l]{\#},      % comment
  morestring=[b]",          % string def
}

\begin{document}

First example with \texttt{lstlisting} and language \LaTeX:

\begin{lstlisting}[style=ConfigFiles]
% File name.tex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstdefinestyle{ConfigFiles}{
  language={[LaTeX]TeX},       % comment
  keywordstyle=\color{blue},   % comment
  basicstyle=\small\ttfamily,
  tabsize=2,
  parameter=wert,
  morekeywords = {parameter},
}
\begin{document}               % comment
Text "text" text               % comment
\end{document}
\end{lstlisting}

Second example with new language \texttt{Kurt}:

\begin{lstlisting}[language={Kurt},keywordstyle=\color{blue},stringstyle=\color{green}]
# some comment
parameter1 = value of parameter1
parameter2 = some another value
parameter3 = wert
# and so on "and so on" ...
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document} 

You will get (black lines are from package showframe):