Syntax Coloring in LaTeX

While listings package is good, it has some deficiencies, especially in Unicode support. I'd recommend trying out minted, which uses the output of Pygments, which is more likely to get grammar updates than listings.

The standard way of doing this is to use the listings package. It allows a wide range of formatting for the output, can choose to display only part of an input file and so on. The package also comes with a number of predefined languages it understands, including Python.

I use matlab code in my papers. To get syntax coloring in matlab, put the following in the header:

\usepackage{alltt}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{fullpage}
\definecolor{string}{rgb}{0.7,0.0,0.0}
\definecolor{comment}{rgb}{0.13,0.54,0.13}
\definecolor{keyword}{rgb}{0.0,0.0,1.0}

Then use the highlight.m function in matlab to generate the code to put in the latex file.

Then just enclose the matlab code inside

\begin{alltt}
%% code generated by highlight.m %%
\end{alltt}