Handle % character in verbatim inside a grey box

Question

I found this snippet on the internet which is used to produce a text area inside a greybox.

\newcommand\greybox[1]{%
  \vskip\baselineskip%
  \par\noindent\colorbox{lightgray}{%
    \begin{minipage}{\textwidth}#1\end{minipage}%
  }%
  \vskip\baselineskip%
}

I use it like this:

Normal text.
\greybox{Surrounded text.

Even on multiple lines}

to produce output like this:

Now, I need to put some source code inside this grey box, and I was planning to use verbatim to do so. Problem is: verbatim escapes %-like characters, but when it is inside a \greybox (as defined above) it doesn't behave correctly. Percent signs are interpreted as comments.

\greybox{
  \begin{verbatim}
    code with a % inside
  \end{verbatim}
}

Obviously if I do the opposite, that is placing \greybox inside verbatim, everything gets escaped and \greybox is not interpreted.

Any solutions to the problem? I don't mind using listings or other packages if necessary.

Answer 1

You mentioned that the listings package is acceptable. Here is an example I used for bash commands.

\usepackage{listings} %for source code format
  \lstset{basicstyle=\ttfamily\scriptsize}
  \lstdefinestyle{command}{backgroundcolor=\color{lightgray}, frame=none}

Here I define

1. Basic style for global environment: the listing would be script-size font size, with monospaced font family.
2. A style name "command", has background light grey, and has no frame outside the listing.

When using the listing,

\begin{lstlisting}[style=command, caption="choose makefile"]
  # cp makef.linux Makefile
\end{lstlisting}

and the style looks like

The listings package can also define language style and recognize comments, such as c-style , python,... Check the list in LaTeX/Source Code Listings.