The guide to syntax highlighting in React

Software developers often read as much code as they write, making code readability crucial, which can be enhanced through appropriate code formatting and syntax highlighting. Libraries like Prism, Highlight, and React syntax highlighter are popular choices for implementing syntax highlighting in browser environments, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. Prism, notably, is favored due to its small core footprint, extensive language support, and customizability through themes and plugins, making it versatile for use with plain JavaScript and frameworks like React. It requires semantic HTML for code presentation, and its integration with tools like Babel and webpack is facilitated through the babel-plugin-prismjs. For React applications, packages such as prism-react-renderer and react-syntax-highlighter offer tailored solutions, with react-syntax-highlighter supporting both Prism and Highlight, while allowing for light builds to minimize footprint. Besides Prism, Rainbow is another noteworthy lightweight syntax highlighting library, particularly useful outside of frameworks like React. Overall, selecting the right syntax-highlighting library depends on the specific needs and framework being used, with options available for various environments and requirements.