cpp2html 1.0

by Lorenzo Bettini

This is a simple program that, given a source C/C++ file, produces an html source with syntax highlighting.

cpp2html is free software. Please see the file COPYING for details. For documentation, please read this file. As it is a GPL program, I provide sources (~70k), but if you don't fell like compiling it, you can download Win32 executable (~100k) (new).
 

This program is based on java2html (whose main site is http://www.gnu.org/software/java2html/java2html.html, but locally should be here); as I received many requests for a similar program for C++ I decided to make a syntax highlighter for C++ as well. This very page is also based on the one of Java2html.

Cpp2html is a GNU program, so you can download it also fro GNU's ftp site:
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/cpp2html/

or from here:

Cpp2html main home page is at GNU site:
http://www.gnu.org/software/cpp2html/cpp2html.html

But you may find it also at my home page:
http://infostud.dsi.unifi.it/~bettini/software/cpp2html/cpp2html.html (Italian University)
http://w3.newnet.it/bettini/software/cpp2html/cpp2html.html

or you can also get the pacthes (see below for patching from a previous version).

see also NEWS file and ChangeLog for the complete list of changes between versions.

Installation

See the file INSTALL for detailed building and installation instructions; anyway if you're used to compiling Linux software that comes with sources you may simply follow the usual procedure:
cd <source code main directory>
./configure
make
make install
Note: unless you specify a different install directory by --prefix option of configure (e.g. ./configure --prefix=<your home>), you must be root to 'make install'.

Files will be installed in the following directories:

Default value for prefix is /usr/local but you may change it with --prefix option to configure (see above).
 

What you need to build cpp2html

Actually you need nothing more than a Unix C/C++ compiler

cpp2html has been developed under Linux, using gcc (C++), and bison (yacc) and flex (lex), and ported under Win32 with Cygnus C/C++ compiler, available at http://www.cygnus.com/ (a .DLL is also distributed togheter with the .exe: you may simply copy it in the same place of the .exe). I used the excellent GNU Autoconf and Automake. I also used Autotools (ftp://ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu/pub/elef/autotools) which creates a starting source tree (according to GNU standards) with autoconf, automake starting files, and getopt_long (for command line parsing).

Actually, unless you want to develop cpp2html, you don't need all these tools to build cpp2html because I provide generated sources; you don't need neither bison (yacc) nor flex (lex), for the same reason. Actually programs that use lex generated files need to link with library libfl (or libl for lex); anyway configuration phase can discover if this library is missing and in that case it sets the program to link with a source file I provide. This hack works for flex: I don't know about lex generated scanners. But, again, this is a problem only if you develop cpp2html and you use lex.

Patching from a previous version

If you downloaded a pacth, say cpp2html-1.3-1.3.1-patch.gz (i.e. the pacth to go from version 1.3 to version 1.3.1), cd to the directory with sources from the previous version (cpp2html-1.3) and type:
gunzip -cd ../cpp2html-1.3-1.3.1.patch.gz | patch -p1
and restart the compilation process (if you had already run configure a simple make will do).

Usage

cpp2html only does a lexical analisys of the source code, so the C++ program is assumed to be correct !

here's how to run it:

cpp2html --input <file (a C++ prog)> --output <file (an html)>
If you do not specify the name of the output file, the name will be the one of the source file with a .html appended.
if you want a real html document, specify --doc option at the end. Otherwise you just get some text to copy and paste in you own html pages. If you choose -doc option the page will have a white background and your source file name as title. --tab n option apply a substitution of tab characters with n spaces. You also may want to specify the title of the page with --title "my title" option (this implies -doc). Now you can also generate an html with CSS format, by using --css "url of .css" (try some .css files included in the package). The order of the options is not relevant.

Here are some links to some of the sources of cpp2html colored with cpp2html itself:

These files have been generated with the following commands:
cpp2html --doc main.cc
cpp2html --doc generators.cc
cpp2html --doc tags.cc
cpp2html --doc messages.cc
Obviosly it works with C files as well: Created with the command:
cpp2html -i cmdline.c -o cmdline.c.html --css="cpp2html.css"
And obviously it works with header files as well (which we colored in black and white :-) created with the command:
cpp2html *.h --css="mono.css"
And here's the output of `cpp2html -help`
Usage: cpp2html [OPTION]... [INPUT-FILE]...
       cpp2html < INPUT-FILE > OUTPUT-FILE [OPTION]...
 
given a source C/C++ file, produces an html source with syntax highlighting.
 
  -v, --verbose           verbose mode on
  -d, --doc               creates html with title, header...
  -c, --css=URL           use a css for formatting (implies --doc)
  -T, --title=TITLE       give title to the html (implies --doc)
  -i, --input=FILE        input file (default standard input)
  -o, --output=FILE       output file (default standard output)
  -t, --tab=TABLEN        specify tab length (default 8)
  -V, --version           print version
As it handles standard output and input you may also run it like
cat MyFile.cpp | cpp2html | lpr
You may want to specify your options for syntax highlighting in the file tags.j2h. If this file is not present in the current directory, some default colors will be used. Here's the tags.j2h file that comes with this distribution:
keyword blue b ;
type green ;
string red ;
comment brown i ;
number purple ;
as you might see the syntax of this file is quite straightforward: You may also specify more than on of these options separated by commas
e.g.
keyword blue u, b ;

you may see all possible colors in the file colors.html

if something goes wrong with your options try to run cpp2html with --verbose option enabled.

Credits

These people helped me with java2html, and I used such features in cpp2html as well, so: See also THANKS  :-)

Feedback

Tell me if you like this software :-)

Actually I want to extend it, so if you have some ideas...
The most import one will be to make cpp2html more customizable :-)

Please send all bug reports by electronic mail to:
bug-cpp2html@gnu.org

My home page is
http://w3.newnet.it/bettini  or
http://infostud.dsi.unifi.it/~bettini (very fast if you're in University)

cpp2html is free software. See the file COPYING for copying conditions. Anyway I won't get offended if you send me a postcard :-)


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 Updated: 27 Mar 1999 jonas