Highlight unquoted parameter expansions

Description

Contributor guide

Tech stack

shell

Domain

clideveloper experience

Issue type

feature

DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.

2

Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.

1-3 hours

Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.

stale

ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.

clear

Prerequisites

basic shell scriptingfamiliarity with zsh syntax highlighting

Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.

70

Research direction

Investigate the highlighting logic in the zsh syntax highlighting plugin. Look for the pattern that currently only highlights variables in double quotes. The relevant file is likely `zsh syntax highlighting.zsh` or similar. Search for regex patterns that match `${...}` and extend to also match unquoted `$...` without quotes. Consider the parsing context to avoid conflicts with other expansions.