Menu
I enjoy using UNIX/bash commands that support coloured output. Consequently, I have a few aliases defined which automatically enable coloured output of the commands that I know support this option. However, I'm sure there are hundreds of commands out there that support coloured output - I'd like to know what they are.
The ones in my ~/.bash_aliases file are:
ls --color=auto
grep --color
phpunit --ansi
What else is there? Is there a list somewhere of all commands that support coloured output? Or better still, some command for grepping my local man pages and plucking out the appropriate command names.
466
The —-color parameter tells grep to color the search terms in the output, which helps them stand out when among all the other text on the line. You choose which color you want using the GREP_COLOR environment variable: export GREP_COLOR=36 gives you cyan, and export GREP_COLOR=32 gives you lime green.
This can be accomplished by adding a \e at the beginning to form an escape sequence. The escape sequence for specifying color codes is \e[COLORm (COLOR represents our color code in this case). By default, echo does not support escape sequences. We need to add the -e option to enable their interpretation.
Why don't you try:
man -K color
That should search for the word color in all your man pages (content, not just headings).
It asks, for each man page, whether you want to open and view the page:
$ man -K color
/usr/share/man/mann/Widget.n.gz? [ynq] y
/usr/share/man/mann/usual.n.gz? [ynq] y
/usr/share/man/mann/Toplevel.n.gz? [ynq] n
/usr/share/man/mann/itk.n.gz? [ynq] n
/usr/share/man/mann/Archetype.n.gz? [ynq] n
/usr/share/man/man8/squid.8.gz? [ynq] n
/usr/share/man/man7/Xprint.7.gz? [ynq]
/usr/share/man/man7/X.7.gz? [ynq]
/usr/share/man/man7/urxvt.7.gz? [ynq]
/usr/share/man/man7/term.7.gz? [ynq] q
$
Inside each individual man page, you can use your normal search method (e.g., /color<ENTER>) for finding the text. When done with a man page, just exit and it will continue searching.
109
A quick bit of google search also reveals grc and grcat, which can be used to colorise any arbitrary text or command. Not sure how well they work though. I'm certainly going to try them out now that I've found them.
Ah, here we go. grc uses the /etc/grc.conf file to colorise a given command based on which regexp it matches. A quick grep of my (Ubuntu 8.10) /etc/grc.conf reveals it currently has support for:
[~]$ less /etc/grc.conf | grep '^#'
# anything to do with irc
# log file
# ping command
# traceroute command
# gcc command
# make command
# netstat command
# diff command
# last command
# ldap tools
# cvs command
But I'm sure you could add your own for other programs you are interested in.
To use grc, simply put it before the command you want to colorise (lets say diff):
grc diff foo.txt bar.txt
And you could certainly alias diff='grc diff' to make diff colorised by default.
27
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
