cecho

Colorful echo for unix-like shell ( ascii color only ), decorate your terminal with more colors.

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Overview

A light, self-adapting wrapper of echo with several useful features, makes easy work for changing foreground, background and text action ( highlight, underline, blink ... ).

Tested in zsh and bash.

Screenshot

Active

Inactive

Install

Before use cecho, simply source it in your .zshrc or .bashrc, or any shell script you want to colorize:

source /path/to/cecho.sh

Usage

Support multi-string in one command:

cecho -color1 message1 [ -color2 message2 ... ] [ -done ]

Support setting foreground, background and action

cecho -fg_color -bg_color -action message [...] [ -done ]

All switches have two forms, short for convenience, long for readability.

The short forms are the abbreviation from the corresponding long forms.

Foreground color arguments

short	long
-r	-red
-g	-green
-y	-yellow
-b	-blue
-p	-purple
-c	-cyan
-w	-white
-gr	-gray
-bk	-black

Background color arguments

short	long
-br	-b_red
-bg	-b_green
-by	-b_yellow
-bb	-b_blue
-bp	-b_purple
-bc	-b_cyan
-bw	-b_white
-bgr	-b_gray
-bbk	-b_black

Action arguments

short	long
-d	-done
-hl	-highlight
-ul	-underline
-re	-reverse
-bl	-blink
-iv	-invisible

Escaped character

short	long
-B	-blank
-t	-tab
-n	-newline

Functional

short	long
-h	-help,--help

Example

set fg to red:

cecho -r "hello world ! "

or

cecho -red "hello world ! "

or

cecho -r hello -B world -B !

blank & tab & newline

cecho -r -t hello -B world -n !

set fg to red, bg to yellow, action to highlight and underline:

cecho -r -by -hl "hello world ! "

set [ red, yellow, highlight & underline ] for "hello", [ cyan, red, reverse ] for "world", [ green, black, blink ] for "!" :

cecho -r -by -hl -ul hello -d -B -c -br -re world -d -B -g -bl !

Please refer to the help file for more examples:

cecho -h

That colorful help page is generated by cecho .

Useful Variables

CECHO_IS_IMPORTED

Once you have sourced cecho, CECHO_IS_IMPORTED=1 will be defined.

That meams you can check this var CECHO_IS_IMPORTED to confirm if you are in a no_cecho env or not:

Exp: Sence 2

CECHO_IS_INACTIVE

If you want to deactive cecho temporarily, set CECHO_IS_INACTIVE=1 before calling cecho.

Note: color and action can be disabled by CECHO_IS_INACTIVE, but return, blank and tab are still active, as you wish.

Sence

1 - I want my script outputs to file/pipe without color_ctrl chars

No need to do any change, cecho can self-adapt this: colorful for stdout, non-colorful for file/pipe.

2 - My script maybe runs in both "no-cecho env" and "cecho env"

Don't be disappointed, you only need to modify your script like this:

if [ -z "$CECHO_IS_IMPORTED" ]
then
	echo hello world
else
	cecho -r -bg -hl hello -B world
fi

Or shortly:

[ -z "$CECHO_IS_IMPORTED" ] && echo "hello world" || cecho -r -bg -hl hello -B world

3 - My script uses cecho but I want to disable it temporarily

CECHO_IS_INACTIVE=1
cecho -r -bg -hl hello world	# <-- now cecho is inactive
CECHO_IS_INACTIVE=
cecho -r -bg -hl hello world	# <-- now cecho is active

Advanced

• Action flag -d ( same as -done ) will turn off all settings ( fg, bg and action ), Thus, in single command, you have to set flags again to retrive it back once there are other strings after -d.
• Some special characters ( with centain format ) don't work properly, such as cecho "!". It's due to echo... use cecho '!' or cecho ! instead.
• It's not necessary to use -d at the begin/end of commands, cecho will take care of it.
• Actions can overlaied.

What's more

Another C version project is coprintf.