lite-hl

A Universal, Heuristic-Based Syntax Highlighter for the Modern Web.

lite-hl is a high-performance, zero-config code tokenizer designed to provide high-fidelity syntax highlighting without the overhead of traditional grammar-based engines. It is built for environments where performance, bundle size, and total language coverage are critical.

Technical Specifications

• Runtime: Node.js (ESM), Browser (Modern), Edge/Cloudflare Workers.
• Language: Written in native TypeScript.
• Distribution: Pure ESM (CommonJS not supported).
• Size: Under 10KB (Gzipped).

The Architecture: Heuristic vs. Grammar

Traditional highlighters like highlight.js or Prism rely on hundreds of massive, language-specific grammar files (regex sets). To support 50 languages, you must load and parse 50 grammar sets, which leads to significant bundle bloat and increased time-to-interactive (TTI).

lite-hl utilizes a Universal Heuristic Engine. Instead of strictly enforcing language rules, it identifies universal programming patterns—comments, strings, numbers, keywords, and function invocations—using an optimized single-pass lexical scanner.

Technical Limitations (Design Choices)

To maintain its ultra-light footprint, lite-hl makes specific engineering trade-offs:

1. Heuristic Tokenization: Unlike highlight.js which performs full semantic parsing, lite-hl uses high-fidelity regex heuristics. This means it may not capture extremely complex, multi-line language-specific edge cases that require a full state-machine parser.
2. No Language Detection: lite-hl does not attempt to guess the language of a code block. It treats all code as universal programming structures.
3. ESM Only: This package is a pure ES Module. Legacy require() environments are not supported natively without a bundler.
4. No Line Numbering: Standard logic focuses on tokenization only; line numbering should be handled by your UI layer or CSS.

• Ultra-Lightweight: At under 10KB, it is a fraction of the size of highlight.js.
• Zero-Config Coverage: Supports every programming language automatically. There is no need to "register" or import language definitions.
• Deep Shell Script Support: Robust parsing of Bash/Shell conventions, recognizing 60+ common utilities (grep, awk, docker, etc.) and dynamic variables ($VAR, ${VAR}).
• High Performance: Tokenization happens in a single regex pass. It is optimized for large-scale documentation generators and real-time previews.
• Legacy Compatibility: natively supports a mimicHljs mode, allowing you to use existing highlight.js CSS themes (like GitHub, Atom, or Monokai) exactly as they are without modification.
• Runtime Agnostic: Works perfectly in Node.js, the browser, and Edge environments.

Installation

npm install lite-hl

Quick Start

Basic Output

import { highlight } from 'lite-hl';

const code = `function init() { console.log("System Ready"); }`;
const { value } = highlight(code);

highlight.js Drop-in Replacement

To use your existing CSS themes, enable mimicHljs:

import { highlight } from 'lite-hl';

const { value } = highlight(code, { mimicHljs: true });
// Generates spans with 'hljs-' prefixed classes.

Comparisons

| Feature | highlight.js | lite-hl | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Size (approx) | ~1.2MB (all languages) | <10KB | | Logic | Grammar-based | Heuristic-based | | Setup | Require language imports | Zero configuration | | Async Support | Limited | Native |

API Reference

highlight(code, options)

Arguments:

• code (string): The raw source code to tokenize.
• options (object):
  • language (string): Metadata for attribution (optional).
  • mimicHljs (boolean, default true): Use hljs- class prefixes.

Returns:

• value (string): Securely escaped HTML with tokenized spans.
• language (string): The detected or provided language.

License

MIT - Developed under the docmd ecosystem by Ghazi.