# Color output in console

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: And maybe create something bigger. Please take active approach if you can add some valuable information. (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#Why and what this page is about)

Related articles

- Emacs#Custom colors and theme
- nano#Syntax highlighting

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.

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: GREP_COLOR is deprecated in favor of GREP_COLORS. (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#)

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:

    ~/.bashrc

    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 (not bash-specific!) also help.

Note: The `LESS_TERMCAP_xx` variables are currently undocumented in less (1). For a detailed explanation, see this answer.

#### Reading from stdin

Note: It is recommended to add colored output through #Environment variables to your `~/.bashrc` or `~/.zshrc`, as the below is based on `export LESS=R`

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 `isatty` function 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.

Note: Using the `--color` option may incur a noticeable performance penalty when ls is run in a directory with very many entries. The default settings require ls to stat(1) every single file it lists. However, if you would like most of the file-type coloring but can live without the other coloring options (e.g. executable, orphan, sticky, other-writable, capability), use dircolors to set the `LS_COLORS` environment variable like this:

    eval $(dircolors -p | perl -pe 's/^((CAP|S[ET]|O[TR]|M|E)\w+).*/$1 00/' | dircolors -)

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 detailes description.

A `less` wrapper of `man` for bash would look like this:

    ~/.bashrc

    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 `man xterm` 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

This article or section is a candidate for moving to [[]].

Notes: Some of these could be made into sections of their own, or moved to existing sections such as #diff (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#)

### 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.

  https://github.com/nicoulaj/rainbow || not packaged? search in AUR

- 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.

  https://github.com/pengwynn/grc || grc

- 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.

  https://github.com/yogan/cope || cope-gitAUR

- 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.

  http://cwrapper.sourceforge.net/ || cwAUR

### Libraries for colorizing an output

- ruby-rainbow — Rainbow is extension to ruby's String class adding support for colorizing text on ANSI terminal

  https://rubygems.org/gems/rainbow/ || ruby-rainbow

- python-blessings — A thin, practical wrapper around terminal coloring, styling, and positioning

  https://pypi.python.org/pypi/blessings || python-blessings, python2-blessings

### Application specific

#### Compilers

- colorgcc — A Perl wrapper to colorize the output of compilers with warning/error messages matching the gcc output format

  https://schlueters.de/colorgcc.html || colorgcc

#### 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.

  http://www.colordiff.org/ || colordiff

- cwdiff — (w)diff wrapper with directories support and highlighting.

  https://github.com/junghans/cwdiff || cwdiffAUR, cwdiff-gitAUR

#### 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.

  http://bre.klaki.net/programs/colormake/ || colormakeAUR, colormake-gitAUR

#### 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.

  http://denilson.sa.nom.br/prettyping/ || prettypingAUR

## Shells

### bash

See Bash/Prompt customization#Colors.

### zsh

See Zsh#Colors.

### Fish

See Fish#Web interface.

## Terminal emulators

### Virtual console

This article or section needs language, wiki syntax or style improvements.

Reason: Lacks clarity on what "the colors" are, i.e. in #Virtual console they are about the representations of the 16 base colors (RGB values for yellow, red, blue, etc.), while in #Login screen they are about the base colors themselves. See also console_codes(4) and User:Isacdaavid/Linux_Console (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#)

The colors in the Linux virtual console—see console(4)—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

Warning: Color resources such as `foreground` and `background` can be read by other applications (such as emacs). This can be avoided by specifiying the class name, for example `XTerm.foreground`.

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

- base16 color schemes

### 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

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Bash/Prompt_customization.

Notes: More context on tput is provided in that article (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#)

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 article or section is a candidate for merging with Bash/Prompt_customization.

Notes: More context on tput is provided in that article (Discuss in Talk:Color output in console#)

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

Categories:

- Eye candy
- Command shells

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