Question

I want to cite LaTeX code into my document but how do I embed the keywords “\begin{lstlisting}” and “\end{lstlisting}” correctly?

CODE BELOW DOES NOT WORK (obviously):

\lstset{language=TeX, basicstyle=\footnotesize, numbers=left, numberstyle=\tiny, frame=single}

\begin{lstlisting}

\begin{lstlisting}          % this is code

place your source code here % this is code

\end{lstlisting}            % this is code

\end{lstlisting}

Answer 1

Do you have \usepackage{listings} in your preamble? If so, it should work. TeX is a supported language.

Here’s a minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\begin{document}
  This is a StackOverflow test file.\\
  To use \texttt{lstlisting}, include this in the preamble:
  \begin{lstlisting}
    \usepackage{listings}
  \end{lstlisting}
  Hope that helped :)
\end{document}

which compiles to

EDIT

To quote commands from the listings package (actually, only for \end{lstlisting}), escape to latex to print the \ character and you’re all set. In the following, I’ve defined @ as the escape character and everything within two @ symbols is typeset in LaTeX. So here, I’ve input the \ using LaTeX and the rest within lstlisting and the \end{...} sequence is not interpreted as a closing the environment.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{listings}
\begin{document}
This is a StackOverflow test file.\\
Use escape characters to escape to \LaTeX 
\lstset{escapechar=\@}
\begin{lstlisting}
  \begin{lstlisting}
      some code here
  @\textbackslash@end{lstlisting}
\end{lstlisting}
Hope that helped :)
\end{document}

The output is