Colored background in listings environnement

Question

I would like to make my listings environnements more readable by coloring the background of some keywords with a specific color. Like this :

I thought using the \colorbox function from xcolor package but It only work with an argument (not as \color) and doesn't work with listings.

Is there another way to get colored text background working with listings environnement?

Answer 1

It's possible to use keywordstyle, identifierstyle etc. and set them to a specific colour or use a specific colour background with \colorbox{colorname} -- The relevant 2nd argument to \colorbox will be inserted by listings automatically. Please note, that this might look not as well as desired, see the example in the C - language with the descenders of the # - symbol:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xcolor}

\usepackage{listings}


\begin{document}

\lstset{ keywordstyle={\colorbox{yellow}},identifierstyle={\colorbox{green}}}

\begin{lstlisting}[language=C]
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  printf("Hello World\n");
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Adding to Christian's answer, you might want to fix height of colorboxes and set their padding to zero, so that they don't change layout of your code.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{listings}

\newcommand{\myColorBox}[3][0pt]{{\fboxsep#1\colorbox{#2}{\strut #3}}}

\begin{document}

\lstset{columns=fullflexible,basicstyle=\ttfamily,keepspaces,language=C}

\begin{lstlisting}
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  printf("Hello World\n");
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
\end{lstlisting}

\begin{lstlisting}[
  keywordstyle={\myColorBox{yellow}},
  identifierstyle={\myColorBox{green}}
]
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  printf("Hello World\n");
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}