Shell General Colors

A script to generate sets of shell variables (ANSI escape sequences) to control text color, boldness, underlining, blinking and other effects.

Support general colors: BLACK RED GREEN YELLOW BLUE PURPLE CYAN WHITE GREY.

Not support custom RGB color. ansi is a good choice.

The difference between ansi and Shell General Colors is usability. Shell General Colors provides simple variables which aim to be fast in runtime while ansi provides flexible functions.

Preview

See Usage and run ./test to preview.

Versioning

Read tags for verions. The versions follow the rules of Semantic Versioning 2.0.0.

Installation

# Clone this repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/adoyle-h/shell-general-colors.git
# Copy it to somewhere in your path
sudo ln -s "$PWD/generate" /usr/local/bin/shell-general-colors

Usage

There are two ways to generate colors: list or map.

Color List

Generate Color List

First, generate a colors.bash file to your project.

# cd to your project
# "shell-general-colors -h" to get usage
shell-general-colors
# Generated file: colors.bash

The generated file "colors.bash" will contain below codes.

# General Foreground Colors
BLACK='\e[30m'
RED='\e[31m'
GREEN='\e[32m'
YELLOW='\e[33m'
BLUE='\e[34m'
PURPLE='\e[35m'
CYAN='\e[36m'
WHITE='\e[37m'
GREY='\e[90m'

# ...

# RESET
RESET_FG='\e[39m'
RESET_BG='\e[49m'
RESET_ALL='\e[0m'

Use Color List

Then source the colors.bash file and use these variables directly.

source <path>/colors.bash

echo -e "this is ${RED}red${RESET_ALL}. this is ${YELLOW}yellow${RESET_ALL}."
printf 'this is %bblue%b.' "${BLUE}" "${RESET_ALL}"

If you want to use color variables with here documents. Use escaped variables.

Color Map

Generate Color Map

First, generate a colors.bash file to your project.

# cd to your project
# "shell-general-colors -h" to get usage
shell-general-colors --map
# Generated file: colors.bash

Notice: When use --map option and specific output, you must pass -- before output path.

shell-general-colors --map -- colors.bash

The generated file "colors.bash" will contain below codes.

declare -g -A colors=(

  # General Foreground Colors
  [BLACK]='\e[30m'
  [RED]='\e[31m'
  [GREEN]='\e[32m'
  [YELLOW]='\e[33m'
  [BLUE]='\e[34m'
  [PURPLE]='\e[35m'
  [CYAN]='\e[36m'
  [WHITE]='\e[37m'
  [GREY]='\e[90m'

  # ...

  # RESET
  [RESET_FG]='\e[39m'
  [RESET_BG]='\e[49m'
  [RESET_ALL]='\e[0m'
)

Use Color Map

Then source the colors.bash file and use these variables directly.

source <path>/colors.bash

RESET_ALL=${colors[RESET_ALL]}
color1=RED
color2=YELLOW
color3=BLUE

echo -e "this is ${colors[color1]}red${RESET_ALL}. this is ${colors[color2]}yellow${RESET_ALL}."
printf 'this is %bblue%b.' "${colors[color3]}" "${RESET_ALL}"

If you want to use color variables with here documents. Use escaped variables.

Advanced Usage

Change generated file path

shell-general-colors "~/colors.bash"
# $output generated

Force write

The script checks existed file by default. You can force write file with -y option.

shell-general-colors -y
# $output generated

Set variable prefix

If -p=<prefix> set, Add prefix <prefix> to each name of exported variables.

shell-general-colors -p C_
# C_BLACK, C_RED, C_BOLD_BLACK ...

Export escaped variables

If -e set, export escaped variables instead of general variables.

If -e=<escaped_suffix> set, export escaped variables instead of general variables. And add suffix <escaped_suffix> to each name of escaped variables.

shell-general-colors -e _ESC
# BLACK_ESC, RED_ESC, BOLD_BLACK_ESC ...

You can use escaped variables with here documents. For example,

cat <<EOF
this is ${RED_ESC}red${RESET_ALL_ESC}.
this is ${YELLOW_ESC}yellow${RESET_ALL_ESC}.
EOF

Export both general variables and escaped variables

shell-general-colors -a -e _ESC
# BLACK, BLACK_ESC, RED, RED_ESC, BOLD_BLACK, BOLD_BLACK_ESC ...

Suggestion, Bug Reporting, Contributing

Before opening new Issue/Discussion/PR and posting any comments, please read Contributing Guidelines.

Copyright and License

Copyright 2019-2023 ADoyle ([email protected]). Some Rights Reserved. The project is licensed under the BSD 3-clause License.

See the LICENSE file for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.

References

• Wikipedia - ANSI escape code
• Stackoverflow - List of ANSI color escape sequences
• FLOZz' MISC » bash:tip_colors_and_formatting
• ASCII Table - ANSI Escape sequences
• ansi codes
• vt100.net - ANSI Control Functions Summary
• JAFROG'S DEV BLOG - Colors In Terminal

Other Projects

• lobash: A modern, safe, powerful utility/library for Bash script development.
• one.bash: An elegant framework to manage commands, completions, dotfiles for bash players.
• Other shell projects created by me.