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For reference purposes: I am using a Macbook Pro Retina (2014) and all software is up to date as of the time I am posting this question. (Using OSX 10.10.2 Yosemite)

I have been struggling for the past few days as I attempted to customized the Terminal window. Everything was going fine... until I decided I only wanted to change the color for the text that you are currently typing (text input) which will then be executed.

I have no problems getting into my .bash_profile and adjusting anything. I simply cannot seem to grasp the color concept well enough such that it only does this one thing for me. Currently my .bash_profile looks like this:

export PS1="\n\n\njboned$ "
export PATH="/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. As a sidenote: I understand the 8-bit snippets used to represent the individual colors, however it seems I cannot figure out how to use them to address only the text input only.

James
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1 Answers1

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To do what you are asking, these steps would be needed:

  • at the end of the prompt, turn on the text color which you want to show
  • when you press return (to complete editing) turn the text-color off.

bash does not reset attributes while you edit, so the color "should" work — while editing. As you edit, bash is likely to use escape sequences which clear the current line (which may fill it with whatever background color you have selected).

The real problem is how to reset the colors when you press Enter. That does not appear to have a straightforward solution: I do not see a way to rebind the Enter key to add features—no distinction is made between levels of interpretation, and you may not find it possible to enhance the Enter key. The key binding feature in bash talks mainly to the readline library; leftovers are sent to bash. In a binding you may be able to do these things:

  • send the name of a macro to bash, or a full echo command which resets colors (since readline has no echo of its own, it seems)
  • the Enter key (i.e., ^M), and
  • to readline directly, the accept-line function

Alternatively, what you could do is bind another key, say control/L to do the bash accept-line function as well as resetting color. Here are a couple of links which you would find useful to investigate how to do this:

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Thomas Dickey
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