ANSI escape sequences
PAINT YOUR BASH
This month, we’ll show you how to decorate your console and give it a fresh new look by adding color to the command line with ANSI escape sequences.
Black on white, or white on black – a terminal doesn’t need to be so boring. Any modern Linux console can display colors to brighten up program output, welcome messages, and even the shell prompt. This article shows you how to add a touch of color and decorate your command line.
The Color Palette
Some programs have their own parameters for adding color to output. Both ls and grep support a --color option that makes command output easier to read (Figure 1). ANSI escape sequences provide the underlying mechanism for this. To get a line of colored output with echo in Bash, you can add an escape sequence to the text (Listing 1).
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
News
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Released
The latest release is focused on hybrid cloud.
-
Microsoft Releases a Linux-Based OS
The company is building a new IoT environment powered by Linux.
-
Solomon Hykes Leaves Docker
In a surprise move, Solomon Hykes, the creator of Docker has left the company.
-
Red Hat Celebrates 25th Anniversary with a New Code Portal
The company announces a GitHub page with links to source code for all its projects
-
Gnome 3.28 Released
The latest GNOME rolls out with better contact management and new features for handling virtual machines.
-
Install Firefox in a Snap on Linux
Mozilla has picked the Snap package system to deliver its application to Linux users.
-
OpenStack Queens Released
The new release comes with new features for mission critical workloads.
-
Kali Linux Comes to Windows
The Kali Linux developers even managed to run full blown XFCE desktop via WSL.
-
Ubuntu to Start Collecting Some Data with Ubuntu 18.04
It will be an ‘opt-out’ feature.
-
CNCF Illuminates Serverless Vision
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation announces a paper describing their model for a serverless ecosystem.