You do not have to start from scratch. A major advantage of Xshell is that its highlight sets are compatible with those from other popular terminal emulators like MobaXterm. The "Cisco network configuration solution" from MobaXterm can be directly ported to Xshell, providing a ready-to-use set of regex rules tailored for Cisco CLI. This includes rules for highlighting Cisco-specific commands, output, and error codes.
Spot duplex mismatches and interface drops immediately.
, providing a quick visual confirmation that the BGP neighbors were talking.
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Here’s how to build the environments.
Standard terminal outputs treat every word equally. Custom highlight sets completely change your workflow by providing three critical benefits:
These indicate that a process is working, recovering, or requires close observation. learning listening discarding init loading standby timeout warning 4. Network Identifiers (Cyan / Magenta / Blue) You do not have to start from scratch
Many Cisco logs start with *Month DD HH:MM:SS . Highlight the entire timestamp in gray to visually separate the actual message.
: For extreme warnings like "ADMINISTRATIVELY DOWN," set the Background Color to Red so the entire line glows.
\b[0-9a-fA-F]4\.[0-9a-fA-F]4\.[0-9a-fA-F]4\b 4. Warnings and Transitions (Yellow / Orange) Track protocol negotiations or minor configuration alerts. Keywords: warning , trunk , spoofing , loading , full Regex Examples: \bwarning\b \btrunk\b 5. Cisco Prompts and System Info (Magenta / Purple) Keep track of hostname changes and execution modes. Keywords: Hostnames, config mode prompts, timestamps Regex Examples: ^[A-Za-z0-9-_]+(\(config[^\)]*\))?# Step-by-Step: How to Configure Highlight Sets in Xshell Follow these steps to build your custom Cisco profile. Open Xshell . Navigate to Tools > Highlight Sets . Click New to create a blank set. Name it Cisco_Best . Click Add to insert a new rule. Enter your Pattern (Regex) . Select your text color and background color. Check the Regular Expression box. Click OK to save the rule. Go to your Session Properties ( File > Properties ). This public link is valid for 7 days
| Pattern | Color | Example | |---------|-------|---------| | ^[a-zA-Z0-9\.-]+[#>$] | | Router# , Switch> | | (config\|interface\|router)\b | Dark Yellow | Router(config-if)# |
Active states like up , established , or success glow in green, giving you instant validation.
In high-stakes maintenance windows, that 0.3 seconds saved per pattern recognition adds up to minutes of avoided mental fatigue. And in network engineering, fatigue is the root of all outages.
Identifying IP addresses in a dense configuration or log file is much easier when they are colorized.
: Use the regular expression \b(?:\d1,3\.)3\d1,3\b to highlight all IPv4 addresses in a neutral color like Gray to make them pop without being distracting.