how to get current terminal color pair in bash

Question

I would like to query and store the current terminal color pair in BASH e.g.:

#!/bin/bash

#some ANSI colour escape sequences
red="\033[0;31m"
grn="\033[0;32m"
blu="\033[0;34m"

def="\033[0;00m" # default

echo -e "Change to ${red} red to ${def} default to ${blu} blue."

# now store the current color (which happens to be blue) e.g.:

cur=????

echo -e "Change to ${grn} green and back to what I had before ${cur}"
echo -e "This would be in blue if variable cur contained e.g.: 0;34m."
echo -e "Back to default${def}"
exit 0

The answer that eludes me is how to capture the current color

cur=????

Answer 1

The question was about the current color, not the cursor position.

Both are "nonstandard" (though the latter, cursor position report is implemented by anything which has a valid claim to "VT100 emulator").

However, xterm implements a set of escape sequences referred to as dynamic colors, which predate the ANSI color functionality. Those set the working colors including text foreground and background. I modified this in 2002 to allow an application to send the sequence with a "?" rather than a color to tell xterm to return the color value, e.g.,

OSC 1 1 ? ST

using the notation given in XTerm Control Sequences