1TERMINAL_COLORS.D(5) terminal-colors.d TERMINAL_COLORS.D(5)
2
6 terminal-colors.d - Configure output colorization for various utilities
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9 /etc/terminal-colors.d/[[name][@term].][type]
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12 Files in this directory determine the default behavior for utilities
13 when coloring output.
14 The name is a utility name. The name is optional and when none is
16 specified then the file is used for all unspecified utilities.
17 The term is a terminal identifier (the TERM environment variable). The
19 terminal identifier is optional and when none is specified then the
20 file is used for all unspecified terminals.
21 The type is a file type. Supported file types are:
23 disable
25 Turns off output colorization for all compatible utilities.
26 enable Turns on output colorization; any matching disable files are
28 ignored.
29 scheme Specifies colors used for output. The file format may be spe‐
31 cific to the utility, the default format is described below.
32 If there are more files that match for a utility, then the file with
34 the more specific filename wins. For example, the filename
35 "@xterm.scheme" has less priority than "dmesg@xterm.scheme". The low‐
36 est priority are those files without a utility name and terminal iden‐
37 tifier (e.g., "disable").
38 The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or $HOME/.con‐
40 fig/terminal-colors.d overrides the global setting.
41
44 The following statement is recognized:
45 name color-sequence
47 The name is a logical name of color sequence (for example "error").
49 The names are specific to the utilities. For more details always see
50 the COLORS section in the man page for the utility.
51 The color-sequence is a color name, ASCII color sequences or escape
53 sequences.
54 Color names
57 black, blink, blue, bold, brown, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, half‐
58 bright, lightblue, lightcyan, lightgray, lightgreen, lightmagenta,
59 lightred, magenta, red, reset, reverse, and yellow.
60 ANSI color sequences
63 The color sequences are composed of sequences of numbers separated by
64 semicolons. The most common codes are:
65 0 to restore default color
68 1 for brighter colors
69 4 for underlined text
70 5 for flashing text
71 30 for black foreground
72 31 for red foreground
73 32 for green foreground
74 33 for yellow (or brown) foreground
75 34 for blue foreground
76 35 for purple foreground
77 36 for cyan foreground
78 37 for white (or gray) foreground
79 40 for black background
80 41 for red background
81 42 for green background
82 43 for yellow (or brown) background
83 44 for blue background
84 45 for purple background
85 46 for cyan background
86 47 for white (or gray) background
87 Escape sequences
89 To specify control or blank characters in the color sequences, C-style
90 \-escaped notation can be used:
91 \a Bell (ASCII 7)
94 \b Backspace (ASCII 8)
95 \e Escape (ASCII 27)
96 \f Form feed (ASCII 12)
97 \n Newline (ASCII 10)
98 \r Carriage Return (ASCII 13)
99 \t Tab (ASCII 9)
100 \v Vertical Tab (ASCII 11)
101 \? Delete (ASCII 127)
102 \_ Space
103 \\ Backslash (\)
104 \^ Caret (^)
105 \# Hash mark (#)
106 Please note that escapes are necessary to enter a space, backslash,
108 caret, or any control character anywhere in the string, as well as a
109 hash mark as the first character.
110 For example, to use a red background for alert messages in the output
112 of dmesg(1), use:
113 echo 'alert 37;41' >> /etc/terminal-colors.d/dmesg.scheme
115 Comments
118 Lines where the first non-blank character is a # (hash) are ignored.
119 Any other use of the hash character is not interpreted as introducing a
120 comment.
121
124 TERMINAL_COLORS_DEBUG=all
125 enables debug output.
126
129 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d
130 $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d
131 /etc/terminal-colors.d
132
135 Disable colors for all compatible utilities:
136 touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable
137 Disable colors for all compatible utils on a vt100 terminal:
139 touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/@vt100.disable
140 Disable colors for all compatible utils except dmesg(1):
142 touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable
143 touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/dmesg.enable
145
148 The terminal-colors.d functionality is currently supported by all util-
149 linux utilities which provides colorized output. For more details
150 always see the COLORS section in the man page for the utility.
151
154 terminal-colors.d is part of the util-linux package and is available
155 from Linux Kernel Archive ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-
156 linux/⟩.
157util-linux January 2014 TERMINAL_COLORS.D(5)