Changing korn shell script text Menu colors?

darthur · #1 (**permalink**) 12-13-2001

Is it possible to change the color of text in a korn shell script Menu?

I can change the color of session text through my telnet client but I want to be able to change color text in the Korn shell menu to highlight certain items.

PxT · #2 (**permalink**) 12-13-2001

Assuming your terminal supports ANSI colors, it is quite easy. You just need to add certain echo statements to achieve certain colors.

The syntax is: echo "^[[#m<text>"

Where the the "^[" character is produced by hitting ctrl-v and then escape and # is substituted with a number depending on the effect you want the second "[" and the "m" are literal characters. Here's an excerpt from some C code listing the various colors (because I'm too lazy to retype it in a different format):

Code:

/* foreground colors */
#define AFC_BLACK           30
#define AFC_RED             31
#define AFC_GREEN           32
#define AFC_YELLOW          33
#define AFC_BLUE            34
#define AFC_MAGENTA         35
#define AFC_CYAN            36
#define AFC_WHITE           37

/* ansi background colors */
#define ABC_BLACK           40
#define ABC_RED             41
#define ABC_GREEN           42
#define ABC_YELLOW          43
#define ABC_BLUE            44
#define ABC_MAGENTA         45
#define ABC_CYAN            46
#define ABC_WHITE           47


/* ansi modes */
#define AM_NORMAL               0         
#define AM_BOLD                 1
#define AM_LOWINTESITY          2
#define AM_ITALIC               3
#define AM_UNDERLINE            4
#define AM_BLINK                5
#define AM_RAPIDBLINK           6
#define AM_REVERSE              7
#define AM_INVISIBLE            8

You can combine the modes, so to print the word "hello" in yellow text on a blue background and then return to normal you would use:

echo "^[[33m^[[44mhello^[[0m"

darthur · #3 (**permalink**) 12-13-2001

Thanks for the reply. That works great with echo, but is there also a way to change the output text of a command to a alternate color also?

darthur · #4 (**permalink**) 12-21-2001

Is it possible to change the color output on other commands like.

banner "^[[31m^[[44m Hello ^[[0m"

Prafulla · #5 (**permalink**) 12-24-2001

Hi
the text colors with banner comand is not coming....
what about the anci mode in the last field how to get blinking text with colours.....

please suggest
prafulla

darthur · #6 (**permalink**) 12-28-2001

prafulla,

Good question. Suggestion on blinking text colours anyone?

#7 (**permalink**) 01-20-2002

I figure that this must be the ANSI standard for colours for ANSI terminals, so it will work for perl scripts, bash scripts and so on?

It seems to on my terminal, however I am a little skeptic with these things in a live environment.

Thanks

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