How to pass colors to echo in bash find -exec command?

Question

I would like to pass colors to an echo command executed after find results:

For example this works:

RED='\033[0;31m'
echo -e "${RED}Red"

But this one does not work:

RED='\033[0;31m'
find . -print -name test -exec bash -c 'echo -e "${RED}{}"' \;

Is this not possible in this way, or is another option like using -printf better? My goal would be to see find output (with -print) and highlight in another color executed find results! Thanks for help or input!

Answer 1

You will need to export RED variable since -exec bash -c spawns a new subshell and RED isn't available to child shell unless it is exported:

export RED='\033[0;31m'

Also find command should be:

find . -name test -exec bash -c 'echo -e "${RED}{}"' \;

You have an extra -print that will print all entries not just named test.

Prefer this form of passing filename to bash -c in argument list:

find . -name 'test' -exec bash -c 'echo -e "$RED$1"' - '{}' \;