How Do I Output Colored Text to a Linux Terminal?

Outputting Coloured Text to a Linux Terminal

In order to enhance the visual appeal of your terminal applications, it may be desirable to output text with colour. But how do you achieve this on a Linux terminal?

ANSI Colour Codes

The secret lies in using ANSI colour codes, also known as escape sequences. These are embedded within the text to specify the desired colour and formatting. For instance, the following code will print "bold red text" in red:

cout << "3[1;31mbold red text3[0m\n";

Escape Sequence Format

The escape sequence consists of the following components:

• ESC (ASCII 27): The escape character
• [ (optional): Start of sequence
• Numerical parameters (separated by ;): Colour and formatting
• m: End of sequence

Supported Colours and Formats

The following colours and formats are supported by most terminals:

Foreground	Background	Format
black	black	reset
red	red	bold/bright
green	green	underline
yellow	yellow	inverse
blue	blue	bold/bright off
magenta	magenta	underline off
cyan	cyan	inverse off
white	white	bold/bright on

Checking Terminal Support

To determine if your terminal supports colour codes, you can check the value of the TERM environment variable. This value should correspond to a terminal type that you can look up in the terminfo database using the colors capability.

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