UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Is it possible to change the color when doing an echo?

Example, having the following command print in dark blue.

Code:

echo "Hello"

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Just figured out how to do it

It might help others if you said how...

An example is

Code:

echo "\033[1;31m Hello \033[0m"

The '31' and the '1' are the things you change. The '31' is the color code, and the '1' is where you put whatever you want to color. The rest of it is the same for every color coding; the beginning starts coloring, and the stuff afterwards stops coloring ('0' switches it back to default text color). You can use the following color codes:

Code:

30 - black
31 - red
32 - green
33 - yellow
34 - blue
35 - magenta
36 - cyan
37 - white

You can make a pretty nice prompt with it. Also, you can modify it further by including another control char:

Code:

%{\033[1;31m%}%m%{\033[0m%}

In this case, the '1' will make the following color bold. You can use the following modifiers:

Code:

0 - normal
1 - bold
2 - normal again
3 - background color
4 - underline the text
5 - blinking

You can also specify both a foreground and a background color.

Code:

echo "\033[5;41;1;37m   *** ERROR ***   \033[0m"