Bash colour one word using echo

Question

I am wanting to colourize one word in the middle of an echo sentence, but can't seem to achieve this.

This works:

#!/bin/bash
wipe="\033[1m\033[0m"
yellow='\E[1;33'
echo -e "$yellow"
echo Hello World
echo -e "$wipe"

But this doesn't:

#!/bin/bash
wipe="\033[1m\033[0m"
yellow='\E[1;33'
black="40m"
echo -e "Output a $yellow coloured $wipe word."
# or
echo -e "Output a ${yellow} coloured ${wipe} word."

What am I stupidly doing wrong? :)

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered May 30 '13 at 22:22

20

Much better, use tput to set a foreground colour:

textreset=$(tput sgr0) # reset the foreground colour
red=$(tput setaf 1)
yellow=$(tput setaf 2) 

echo "Output a ${yellow} coloured ${textreset} ${red} word ${textreset}."

answered May 30 '13 at 22:22

Salah Eddine Taouririt

24,925
20
60
96

I shall have a dabble with tput, only seen it recently, looks good. Thanks. – Zippyduda May 31 '13 at 06:34
1

There are [other colours and commands](http://stackoverflow.com/a/20983251/24874) for `tput` too. It's an awesome little tool for shell scripting. – Drew Noakes Jan 07 '14 at 22:30
how does this compare, performance-wise, with explicitly putting in the escape code? – xdavidliu Oct 09 '20 at 21:48

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '13 at 21:03

8

You forgot an m in your ANSI escape code for yellow. This works:

yellow='\E[1;33m'

answered May 30 '13 at 21:03

Lynn

10,425
43
75

Bash colour one word using echo

2 Answers2