Color output in console
This page was created to consolidate colorization of CLI outputs.
Applications
diff
diffutils from version 3.4 includes the --color option (GNU mailing list).
$ alias diff='diff --color=auto'
grep
The --color=auto option enables color highlighting. Color codes are emitted only on standard output; not in pipes or redirection.
Color output in grep is also useful with regexp tasks.
Use an alias to permanently enable this option:
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
The GREP_COLORS variable is used to define colors, and it configures various parts of highlighting.
See grep(1) for more information.
The GREP_COLOR environment variable can be used to define the default highlight color (the default is red). To change the color, find the needed ANSI escape sequence and apply it with:
export GREP_COLOR="1;32"
The -n option includes file line numbers in the output.
less
Environment variables
Add the following lines to your shell configuration file:
export LESS=-R export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[1;31m' # begin bold export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[1;36m' # begin blink export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m' # reset bold/blink export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m' # begin reverse video export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m' # reset reverse video export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[1;32m' # begin underline export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m' # reset underline # and so on
Change the values (ANSI escape code) as you like. This blog post and the page Bash/Prompt customization also help.
Reading from stdin
When you run a command and pipe its standard output (stdout) to less for a paged view (e.g. pacman -Qe | less), you may find that the output is no longer colored. This is usually because the program tries to detect if its stdout is an interactive terminal, in which case it prints colored text, and otherwise prints uncolored text. This is good behaviour when you want to redirect stdout to a file, e.g. pacman -Qe > pkglst-backup.txt, but less suited when you want to view output in less.
Some programs provide an option to disable the interactive tty detection:
# dmesg --color=always | less
In case that the program does not provide any similar option, it is possible to trick the program into thinking its stdout is an interactive terminal with the following utilities:
- stdoutisatty — A small program which catches the
isattyfunction call.
- https://github.com/lilydjwg/stdoutisatty. || stdoutisatty-gitAUR
- Example:
stdoutisatty program | less
- unbuffer — A tclsh script comes with expect, it invokes desired program within a pty.
- http://expect.sourceforge.net/example/unbuffer.man.html || expect
- Example:
unbuffer program | less
Alternatively, using zpty module from zsh: [1]
~/.zshrc
zmodload zsh/zpty
pty() {
zpty pty-${UID} ${1+$@}
if [[ ! -t 1 ]];then
setopt local_traps
trap '' INT
fi
zpty -r pty-${UID}
zpty -d pty-${UID}
}
ptyless() {
pty $@ | less
}
Usage:
$ ptyless program
To pipe it to other pager (less in this example):
$ pty program | less
ls
The --color=auto option enables color highlighting. Color codes are emitted only on standard output; not in pipes or redirection.
Use an alias to permanently enable this option:
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
The LS_COLORS variable is used to define colors, and it configures various parts of highlighting. Use the dircolors(1) command to set it.
See ls(1) for more information.
man
To enable colored man, two main pagers, less and most, are hacked here.
Using less
See #less for a more detailed description.
For bash or zsh, add the following less wrapper function to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:
man() {
LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[01;31m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;44;33m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' \
LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[01;32m' \
command man "$@"
}
For Fish you could accomplish this with:
~/.config/fish/config.fish
set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_md (printf "\e[01;31m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_me (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_se (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_so (printf "\e[01;44;33m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_ue (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_us (printf "\e[01;32m")
Remember to source your config or restart your shell to make the changes take effect.
Using most
The basic function of 'most' is similar to less and more, but it has a smaller feature set. Configuring most to use colors is easier than using less, but additional configuration is necessary to make most behave like less.
Install the most package.
Edit /etc/man_db.conf, uncomment the pager definition and change it to:
DEFINE pager most -s
Test the new setup by typing:
$ man whatever_man_page
Modifying the color values requires editing ~/.mostrc (creating the file if it is not present) or editing /etc/most.conf for system-wide changes. Example ~/.mostrc:
% Color settings color normal lightgray black color status yellow blue color underline yellow black color overstrike brightblue black
Another example showing keybindings similar to less (jump to line is set to 'J'):
% less-like keybindings unsetkey "^K" unsetkey "g" unsetkey "G" unsetkey ":" setkey next_file ":n" setkey find_file ":e" setkey next_file ":p" setkey toggle_options ":o" setkey toggle_case ":c" setkey delete_file ":d" setkey exit ":q" setkey bob "g" setkey eob "G" setkey down "e" setkey down "E" setkey down "j" setkey down "^N" setkey up "y" setkey up "^Y" setkey up "k" setkey up "^P" setkey up "^K" setkey page_down "f" setkey page_down "^F" setkey page_up "b" setkey page_up "^B" setkey other_window "z" setkey other_window "w" setkey search_backward "?" setkey bob "p" setkey goto_mark "'" setkey find_file "E" setkey edit "v"
Using X resources
A quick way to add color to manual pages viewed on xterm/uxterm or rxvt-unicode is to modify ~/.Xresources.
xterm
*VT100.colorBDMode: true *VT100.colorBD: red *VT100.colorULMode: true *VT100.colorUL: cyan
which replaces the decorations with the colors. Also add:
*VT100.veryBoldColors: 6
if you want colors and decorations (bold or underline) at the same time. See xterm(1) for a description of the veryBoldColors resource.
rxvt-unicode
URxvt.colorIT: #87af5f URxvt.colorBD: #d7d7d7 URxvt.colorUL: #87afd7
Run:
$ xrdb -load ~/.Xresources
Launch a new xterm/uxterm or rxvt-unicode and you should see colorful man pages.
This combination puts colors to bold and underlined words in xterm/uxterm or to bold, underlined, and italicized text in rxvt-unicode. You can play with different combinations of these attributes (see the sources[dead link 2013-09-10] of this item).
pacman
Pacman has a color option. Uncomment the Color line in /etc/pacman.conf.
Wrappers
Universal wrappers
(most of them outdated but still functioning)
They go with multiple preconfigured presets that can be changed, and new can be created/contributed.
- rainbow — Colorize commands output or STDIN using patterns.
Presets: df, diff, env, host, ifconfig, java-stack-trace, jboss, jonas, md5sum, mvn2, mvn3, ping, tomcat, top, traceroute.
- grc — Yet another colouriser for beautifying your logfiles or output of commands.
Presets: configure, cvs, df, diff, esperanto, gcc, irclog, ldap, log, mount, netstat, ping, proftpd, traceroute, wdiff.
- colorlogs — Colorize commands output or STDIN using patterns.
Presets: logs, git status, ant, maven.
- https://github.com/memorius/colorlogs || not packaged? search in AUR
- cope — A colourful wrapper for terminal programs.
Presets: acpi, arp, cc, df, dprofpp, fdisk, free, g++, gcc, id, ifconfig, ls, lspci, lsusb, make, md5sum, mpc, netstat, nm, nmap, nocope, ping, pmap, ps, readelf, route, screen, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, shasum, socklist, stat, strace, tcpdump, tracepath, traceroute, w, wget, who, xrandr.
- cw — A non-intrusive real-time ANSI color wrapper for common unix-based commands.
Presets: arp, arping, auth.log@, blockdev, cal, cksum, clock, configure, cpuinfo@, crontab@, cw-pipe, cw-test.cgi, date, df, diff, dig, dmesg, du, env, figlet, file, find, finger, free, fstab@, fuser, g++, gcc, group@, groups, hdparm, hexdump, host, hosts@, id, ifconfig, inittab@, iptables, last, lastlog, lsattr, lsmod, lsof, ltrace-color, make, md5sum, meminfo@, messages@, mount, mpg123, netstat, nfsstat, nmap, nslookup, objdump, passwd@, ping, pmap, pmap_dump, praliases, profile@, protocols@, ps, pstree, quota, quotastats, resolv.conf@, route, routel, sdiff, services@, showmount, smbstatus, stat, strace-color, sysctl, syslog, tar, tcpdump, tracepath, traceroute, umount, uname, uptime, users, vmstat, w, wc, whereis, who, xferlog.
- ccze — A fast log colorizer written in C, intended to be adrop-in replacement for colorize
Libraries for colorizing an output
- ruby-rainbow — Rainbow is extension to ruby's String class adding support for colorizing text on ANSI terminal
- python-blessings — A thin, practical wrapper around terminal coloring, styling, and positioning
Application specific
Compilers
- colorgcc — A Perl wrapper to colorize the output of compilers with warning/error messages matching the gcc output format
diff
Diff has built-in color output, which is reasonable to use. But the following wrappers can be used:
- colordiff — Perl script for diff highlighting.
- cwdiff — (w)diff wrapper with directories support and highlighting.
less
source-highlight
You can enable code syntax coloring in less. First, install source-highlight, then add these lines to your shell configuration file:
~/.bashrc
export LESSOPEN="| /usr/bin/source-highlight-esc.sh %s" export LESS='-R '
lesspipe
Frequent users of the command line interface might want to install lesspipe.
Users may now list the compressed files inside of an archive using their pager:
$ less compressed_file.tar.gz
==> use tar_file:contained_file to view a file in the archive -rw------- username/group 695 2008-01-04 19:24 compressed_file/content1 -rw------- username/group 43 2007-11-07 11:17 compressed_file/content2 compressed_file.tar.gz (END)
lesspipe also grants less the ability of interfacing with files other than archives, serving as an alternative for the specific command associated for that file-type (such as viewing HTML via python-html2text).
Re-login after installing lesspipe in order to activate it, or source /etc/profile.d/lesspipe.sh.
Make
- colormake — A simple wrapper around make to make it's output more readable.
Ping
- prettyping — Add some great features to ping monitoring. A wrapper around the standard ping tool with the objective of making the output prettier, more colorful, more compact, and easier to read.
Shells
bash
See Bash/Prompt customization#Colors.
zsh
See Zsh#Colors.
Fish
See Fish#Web interface.
Terminal emulators
Virtual console
The colors in the Linux virtual console running on the framebuffer can be changed. This is done by writing the escape code \\e]PXRRGGBB, where X is the hexadecimal index of the color from 0-F, and RRGGBB is a traditional hexadecimal RGB code.
For example, to reuse existing colors defined in ~/.Xresources, add the following to the shell initialization file (such as ~/.bashrc):
if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
_SEDCMD='s/.*\*color\([0-9]\{1,\}\).*#\([0-9a-fA-F]\{6\}\).*/\1 \2/p'
for i in $(sed -n "$_SEDCMD" $HOME/.Xresources | awk '$1 < 16 {printf "\\e]P%X%s", $1, $2}'); do
echo -en "$i"
done
clear
fi
Login screen
The below is a colored example of the virtual console login screen in /etc/issue. Create a backup of the original file with mv /etc/issue /etc/issue.bak as root, and create a new /etc/issue:
\e[H\e[2J
\e[1;30m| \e[34m\\s \\r
\e[36;1m/\\\\ \e[37m|| \e[36m| | \e[30m|
\e[36m/ \\\\ \e[37m|| \e[36m| _ \e[30m| \e[32m\\t
\e[1;36m/ \e[0;36m.. \e[1m\\\\ \e[37m//==\\\\\\\\ ||/= /==\\\\ ||/=\\\\ \e[36m| | |/ \\\\ | | \\\\ / \e[30m| \e[32m\\d
\e[0;36m/ . . \\\\ \e[37m|| || || | || || \e[36m| | | | | | X \e[1;30m|
\e[0;36m/ . . \\\\ \e[37m\\\\\\\\==/| || \\\\==/ || || \e[36m| | | | \\\\_/| / \\\\ \e[1;30m| \e[31m\\U
\e[0;36m/ .. .. \\\\ \e[0;37mA simple, lightweight linux distribution. \e[1;30m|
\e[0;36m/_\x27 `_\\\\ \e[1;30m| \e[35m\\l \e[0mon \e[1;33m\\n
\e[0m
Save the file and make it executable with chmod +x /etc/issue.
See also:
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=386429#p386429
- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/logon.html
X window system
Most Xorg terminals, including xterm and urxvt, support at least 16 basic colors. The colors 0-7 are the 'normal' colors. Colors 8-15 are their 'bright' counterparts, used for highlighting. These colors can be modified through X resources, or through specific terminal settings. For example:
~/.Xresources
! Black + DarkGrey *color0: #000000 *color8: #555753 ! DarkRed + Red *color1: #ff6565 *color9: #ff8d8d ! DarkGreen + Green *color2: #93d44f *color10: #c8e7a8 ! DarkYellow + Yellow *color3: #eab93d *color11: #ffc123 ! DarkBlue + Blue *color4: #204a87 *color12: #3465a4 ! DarkMagenta + Magenta *color5: #ce5c00 *color13: #f57900 !DarkCyan + Cyan (both not tango) *color6: #89b6e2 *color14: #46a4ff ! LightGrey + White *color7: #cccccc *color15: #ffffff
See also:
- #Using X resources for how to color bold and underlined text automatically.
- Color Themes - Extensive list of terminal color themes by Phraktured.
- Xcolors.net List of user-contributed terminal color themes.
- Xcolors by dkeg
Display all 256 colors
Prints all 256 colors across the screen.
$ (x=`tput op` y=`printf %76s`;for i in {0..256};do o=00$i;echo -e ${o:${#o}-3:3} `tput setaf $i;tput setab $i`${y// /=}$x;done)
Display tput escape codes
Replace tput op with whatever tput you want to trace. op is the default foreground and background color.
$ ( strace -s5000 -e write tput op 2>&2 2>&1 ) | tee -a /dev/stderr | grep -o '"[^"]*"'
033[\033[1;34m"\33[39;49m"\033[00m
Enumerate supported colors
The following command will let you discover all the terminals you have terminfo support for, and the number of colors each terminal supports. The possible values are: 8, 15, 16, 52, 64, 88 and 256.
$ for T in `find /usr/share/terminfo -type f -printf '%f '`;do echo "$T `tput -T $T colors`";done|sort -nk2
Eterm-88color 88 rxvt-88color 88 xterm+88color 88 xterm-88color 88 Eterm-256color 256 gnome-256color 256 konsole-256color 256 putty-256color 256 rxvt-256color 256 screen-256color 256 screen-256color-bce 256 screen-256color-bce-s 256 screen-256color-s 256 xterm+256color 256 xterm-256color 256
Enumerate terminal capabilities
This command is useful to see what features that are supported by your terminal.
$ infocmp -1 | sed -nu 's/^[ \000\t]*//;s/[ \000\t]*$//;/[^ \t\000]\{1,\}/!d;/acsc/d;s/=.*,//p'|column -c80
bel cuu ich kb2 kf15 kf3 kf44 kf59 mc0 rmso smul blink cuu1 il kbs kf16 kf30 kf45 kf6 mc4 rmul tbc bold cvvis il1 kcbt kf17 kf31 kf46 kf60 mc5 rs1 u6 cbt dch ind kcub1 kf18 kf32 kf47 kf61 meml rs2 u7 civis dch1 indn kcud1 kf19 kf33 kf48 kf62 memu sc u8 clear dl initc kcuf1 kf2 kf34 kf49 kf63 op setab u9 cnorm dl1 invis kcuu1 kf20 kf35 kf5 kf7 rc setaf vpa
Color scheme scripts
See [2] for scripts which display a chart of your current terminal scheme.
See also
- lolcat clone in x64 assembly
- Setting colors for less and solving related problems (threads on StackExchange)