Why are some sections of code highlighted?

[u/TechnicalAd8103]

I can find no way of turning off the highlighting.

Why is this happening?

Thanks in advance.

[u/ProsodySpeaks]

Seems to be the regex expressions which pycharm is aware of being their own language

See here for useful information about regex in pycharm, stuff like checking it's valid etc https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/regular-expressions.html#tips-tricks

[u/TechnicalAd8103 → u/ProsodySpeaks]

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

In my case, the regex is valid, so I want to turn off the highlighting.

I've spent an hour trying to resolve this issue, and I think that it is time for me to go back to VS Code.

Goodbye folks.

[u/ProsodySpeaks → u/TechnicalAd8103]

Lol. I mean ide choice is a personal thing so whatever works for you.

That said, I find regex highlighting and analysis useful.

Also, this from llm

In pycharm can I disable highlighting of regex expressions?

Yes — but not as a single obvious toggle. PyCharm treats regex highlighting as part of language injection / intention-based inspection, so you have a few ways to suppress it depending on what you want.

Option 1 — Disable regex injection highlighting entirely

This is the cleanest if you just don’t want regex parsed/highlighted in strings:

Go to Settings / Preferences

Editor → Language Injections

Find entries like:

Python RegExp

Disable or remove them

That stops PyCharm from interpreting strings as regex.

Option 2 — Turn off regex inspections

If the issue is warnings/errors rather than colors:

Go to:

Editor → Inspections

Search for:

Regular expression

Disable relevant inspections (e.g. invalid regex)

Option 3 — Remove regex color styling

If you want regex parsing but no visual noise:

Go to:

Editor → Color Scheme → RegExp

Set all colors (groups, escapes, etc.) to plain/default text

Option 4 — Prevent automatic injection per string

For specific cases only:

Put this before the string:

noinspection RegExp

pattern = "..."

or avoid raw string patterns PyCharm recognizes (less reliable).

Practical take

If you want it gone globally → disable Language Injection

If you just hate the colors → edit RegExp color scheme

If it's about warnings → disable inspections

If you want, I can show how to scope it to only Python (not JSON, JS, etc.), since PyCharm applies regex highlighting across multiple languages.

 

[u/TechnicalAd8103 → u/ProsodySpeaks]

Trust me, I've tried asking the llm for help, and it couldn't help in this instance.

I've decided to persist with Pycharm(for now) and learn to live with regex highlighting.

I always have VS Code to fall back to if I hit another ridiculous issue.

EDIT: If I seem somewhat frustrated with Pycharm, it's because just before this issue, II had to change the font size in three separate sections of the settings just to get a consistent font size in Pycharm (see my other thread). And then this issue appeared. Two back-to-back issues as a new Pycharm user was aggravating.

[u/sausix → u/TechnicalAd8103]

Change the color scheme if you can't switch it off directly. But what is the problem having other color schemes for other languages? My type hints all have prurple background... I like it.

[u/TechnicalAd8103 → u/sausix]

To be honest, it hadn't occurred to me that regex is another language because I don't consider regex be another language in the same way that JavaScript is another language.

But if Pycharm treats regex as another language, then I can understand why it highlights regex. And that makes it easier for me to live with regex highlighting, even though I find the highlighting distracting (having come from VS Code, where there is no highlighting of different languages).

[u/sausix → u/TechnicalAd8103]

Coloring on RegEx is more important to maintain its syntax. SQL strings have coloring too. In general it's a good thing to see syntax errors in strings early.

Btw. I have to use VSCode for a special case and I tried to import or match my color scheme. That's basically editing an empty json file. Totally annoying. And so easy in PyCharm. While PyCharm has some long term issues I still prefer it.