Colorize your command line

I spend too much time in the terminal for it not to give me feedback with color. Here is a collection of things I use to spruce up the boring terminal.

*note I use black as my background color.

PS1 color prompt


Me PS1 prompt has been far to long and tells me little to no information. I am slowly evolving it to tell me more here is what I have so far:

BASE="-=-\[$MAGENTA\]\u@\h\[$LIGHT_GREEN\]-=-\[$CYAN\]\D{'%H:%M'}\[$LIGHT_GREEN\]-=-\[$COLOR_OFF\]\n\
\[$GREEN\]\w\[$CYAN\]> \[$COLOR_OFF\]"
export PS1="\`if [ \$? = 0 ];
    then
        echo -e '\[$LIGHT_GREEN\]$BASE';
    else
        # On failure echo this
        echo -e '\[$RED\]$BASE';
    fi; \`"
fi

Looks like:

-=-username@hostname-=-12:55-=-                                                      
/path/to/location>                                                                              

If the previous command failed a little port of my top line changes:

-=-username@hostname-=-12:55-=-                                                      

/path/to/location>                                                                              

General programs to add more color in to your life

Other programs i've started using that help me see more color:

• colordiff
• colortail
• vimdiff
• htop

What no color less?

Since I can't find a good viable color less I just use screen. I use screen almost everywhere anyways so it works. It feels a little unnatural but i'll take it.

Bash aliases/options to make better color output

colors.bash: a file I import to make using colors easier. 

export GRAY="\e[30m"
export RED="\e[31m"
export GREEN="\e[32m"
export LIGHT_GREEN="\e[1;32m"
export YELLOW="\e[33m"
export BLUE="\e[34m"
export LIGHT_BLUE="\e[1;34m"
export CYAN="\e[36m"
export MAGENTA="\e[1;35m"
export GRAY="\e[37m"
export LIGHT_CYAN="\e[1;36m"
export COLOR_OFF="\e[0m"

Make grep display color
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'


History color output

export HISTTIMEFORMAT=`echo -e "${CYAN}%m/%d/%y ${COLOR_OFF}- ${YELLOW}%H:%M:%S $GREEN"`

 1008 05/08/11 - 12:30:22 clevar       

Dmesg color and readable dates:

alias dmesg="dmesg -T|sed -e 's|\(^.*'`date +%Y`']\)\(.*\)|\x1b[0;34m\1\x1b[0m - \2|g'"

[Mon Sep  9 12:33:35 2013] -  EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: commit=0

Notes:

Look in to switching to tput instead of using the direct ansi colors.