How Code Color is Set in StackOverflow?

Question

The most favorite feature of StackOverflow for me is that it can automatically detect code in post and set appropriate color to the code.

I\'m wondering how the color is

Answer 1

As said by dbr, it does a dummy highlight of most common constructs of languages. Which doesn't work well with some exotic syntaxes. I wonder if we can do code sections without highlighting, BTW.

For id = 1 To 10 Do
  CallSomething() // It likes CamelCase identifiers...
End

for id = 1 to 10 do # Also highlight some common keywords...
  if id % 2 then call_something(); x++; end
end

'str' "str" 12 + 15.6 * -7e+9 /* Some common constant forms */
=/regex/ ~/regex/ +/RE/ !/regexpr/ but not /[^regex]/ (no operator before it)

(* Some comment conventions are overlooked... *)
-- Lua's (and some other languages')
; So are these comments...
' And these (Basic)

Works well enough for common code to make illusion, and better than loading dozen of syntaxes in the browser.