I need to display a line in an xterm window but i want to revese the colors so that the background color becomes the foreground color and the foreground color the background color. I want to do this as part of ksh script.

Can somebody tell me how to do this ?

Thanks,
Abu.

Try:
echo $(tput rev) text goes here $(tput rmso)

Is there any difference between "tput rev" and "tput smso"?

That depends on the capabilities of the terminal and the author of the terminal's terminfo entry.

"rev" is clearly reverse video.

As for smso, the terminfo man page states:Hmmm...as I look at the man page though, I see that I shouldn't have used "rmso"...So this is a better answer:

echo $(tput rev) text goes here $(tput sgr0)

Aha... I didn't realize that there was a more correct way that "rmso"... Thank you for clearing that up for me.

Muchos Gracias.. LivinFree and Perdarbo