Escape moredelim in lstlisting

Question

I am wondering if it is still possible to print characters chosen to be moredelim in \lstdefinestyle. It turns out that since I've defined a character as moredelim, it can only be used inside quotes or comments with no obvious way to escape it. Here is some code to help understanding what I mean:

% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings,xcolor}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\newcommand{\listingsfont}{\fontfamily{courier}}

\lstdefinestyle{test}{
    language={sh},
    moredelim=**[is][\color{red}]{~}{~},
    basicstyle=\ttfamily, 
}

\begin{document}

I want to highlight first two command arguments in the following code:
\begin{verbatim}
$ ./my-command some-dir some-dir2 some-other-argument
$ ./my-command ~/Desktop ~/Documents some-other-argument
\end{verbatim}


What I get:
\begin{lstlisting}[style=test]
$ ./my-command ~some-dir~ ~some-dir2~ some-other-argument
$ ./my-command ~"~/Desktop"~ ~~./Documents~ some-other-argument
# ~ is not shown before ./Documents because of being used in moredelim,
# but it can be still printed in comments / inside strings.
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Of course, in my simple example I can overcome the problem by using some other characters instead of ~, but when it comes to a document with several hundred pages and lots of listings, it's good to know that whatever moredelims you choose, you won't put yourself into a trap.

How can I keep ~ (or any other character) as moredelim, but still be able to print it when needed?

Answer 1

Looks like I got the solution to my own problem now. It’s in using literate when defining \lstdefinestyle:

% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings,xcolor}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage{verbatim}

\newcommand{\listingsfont}{\fontfamily{courier}}

\lstdefinestyle{test}{
    language={sh},
    moredelim=**[is][\color{red}]{~}{~},
    moredelim=**[is][\color{blue}]{<}{>},
    basicstyle=\ttfamily, 
    literate={\\~}{{\textasciitilde}}1
        {\\<}{{\unichar{"003C}}}1 
        {\\>}{{\unichar{"003E}}}1
}

\begin{document}

\textasciitilde, > or < can be escaped using \texttt{literate}, and still be used as \texttt{moredelim}:
\begin{lstlisting}[style=test]
$ ./my-command ~some-dir~ ~some-dir2~ some-other-argument
$ ./my-command ~"~/Desktop"~ ~\~./Documents~ some-other-argument
$ ls \~ > /dev/null
$ <ls \~ \> /dev/null>  
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

You can prepend your moredelim character with backslash and replace this sequence with a pure character. The trick is in using a corresponding latex command for the character or its unicode definition. If you type {\\~}{{~}}1 instead of {\\~}{{\textasciitilde}}1, this won’t work as latex will end up with a death loop.

With such workaround you can have very short and simple moredelims, but won’t have to limit yourself in what you print in your listings.