Mastering Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

Bringing color to the Terminal

If we are to display text messages to the users and operators executing the scripts, we can provide colors to help in message interpretation. Using red as a synonym for errors and green to indicate success makes it easier to add functionality to our scripts. Not all but certainly a vast majority of Linux Terminals support color. The built-in command echo, when used with the -e option, can display color to users.

To display a text in red, we can use the echo command as follows:

$ echo -e "\033[31mError\033[0m"

The following screenshot shows both the code and the output:

The red text will bring immediate attention ...