Eli's BASH Colors

A BASH library for working with ANSI formatting codes.

Source it into your script:

source /path/to/eli-bash-colors.sh

The commands

There are two functions defined in eli-bash-colors.sh:

ebcolor_clf

• Usage: ebcolor_clf, ebcolor_clf -p
• Description: prints out the ANSI Escape sequence to clear formatting (\033[0m)
• Arguments:
  • -p, --print_seq: print the code out, without actually running it
• Return Codes:
  • 0 - ran without issue
  • 1 - recieved an argument other than -p, or received multiple arguments

ebcolor_esc

• Usage: ebcolor_esc [ARGS]
• Description: generates an ANSI escape sequence from the parameters.
• Arguments:
  • -p, --print-seq: print the control sequence out, instead of using it
  • -f color, --foreground color: set the foreground color
  • -b color, --background color: set the background color
  • -F color, --intense-foreground color: set the foreground color to the intense/bright version of color (non-standard)
  • -B color, --intense-background color: set the background color to the intense/bright version of color (non-standard)
  • -P, --plain,-0: plain text
  • -e, --bold,-1: bold text
  • -d, --dim,-2: dim text (not widely supported)
  • -i, --italic, -3: italic text (not widely supported)
  • -u, --underline, -4: underlined text
  • -t, --blink, -5: flashing text (ignored on most terminal emulators)
  • -T, --fast-blink, -6: fast blink (not widely supported)
  • -R, --reverse, -7: switch foreground and background
  • -I, --hidden, -8: make text invisible (not widely supported)
  • -s, --strike, -9: strike through text (not widely supported)
  • -n int, --code int: manually specify a code to use
• Color Codes:
  • 0, black, dark-gray, dark-grey, bk, dg
  • 1, red, r
  • 2, green,g
  • 3, yellow, orange, brown, y, o, br
  • 4, blue, bl
  • 5, magenta, purple, m, p
  • 6, cyan, c
  • 7, white, light-gray, light-grey, w, lg
  • 8 int, 8-bit int, 256-color int - specify an 8-bit color id
  • 9 int int int, 24 int int int, 24-bit int int int, rgb int int int: specify RGB color values
• Return Codes:
  • 1 - unrecognized flag
  • 2 - unrecognized option for flag

Examples:

echo "$(ebcolor_esc -f red -B white -i)Red on intense white italics$(ebcolor_esc)"

echo "$(ebcolor_esc --blink --intense-foreground yellow --strike --bold --background black --reverse)OBNOXIOUS$(ebcolor_esc)"

echo "$(ebcolor_esc -f rgb 195 0 180)rgb 195, 0, 180$(ebcolor_esc)"

read -p "Prompt: $(ebcolor_esc -B dg -F w -e)"; printf "$(ebcolor_clf)"

Why don't you just use tput?

tput is much more efficient and widely supported than this little script, which I made for fun over the course of a few days.

That said, I'd argue that there are two advantages over tput.

• I find that this is easier to use than tput, but that could be because I made it myself, so it's more familiar to me.

• This supports full 24-bit color