Is there a cross-platform way to check if stdout is being piped into another program in Rust?

Question

I'd like to disable colors when the output is piped somewhere else than a terminal.

Answer 1

As of Rust 1.70, std::io::IsTerminal is available:

use std::io::IsTerminal;

fn main() {
    dbg!(std::io::stdout().is_terminal());
}

Alternatively, crossterm has a is_tty() method, and there's also the is-terminal crate (a maintained fork of atty).

Answer 2

Translated into the POSIX language, your question would be: "is stdout not a TTY", so the answer on *nix can be obtained by !isatty(STDOUT_FILENO). The libc crate can be used to call this from Rust.

On Windows, it's complicated, so you're better off using the atty crate.

[edit] You can use the atty crate on Linux as well, making it a convenient solution for cross-platform programs.