# Term::ANSIColor -- Color screen output using ANSI escape sequences. # # Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, # 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 Russ Allbery # Copyright 1996 Zenin # Copyright 2012 Kurt Starsinic # # This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it # under the same terms as Perl itself. # # PUSH/POP support submitted 2007 by openmethods.com voice solutions # # Ah, September, when the sysadmins turn colors and fall off the trees.... # -- Dave Van Domelen ############################################################################## # Modules and declarations ############################################################################## package Term::ANSIColor; use 5.006; use strict; use warnings; use Carp qw(croak); use Exporter (); # use Exporter plus @ISA instead of use base for 5.6 compatibility. ## no critic (ClassHierarchies::ProhibitExplicitISA) # Declare variables that should be set in BEGIN for robustness. ## no critic (Modules::ProhibitAutomaticExportation) our (@EXPORT, @EXPORT_OK, %EXPORT_TAGS, @ISA, $VERSION); # We use autoloading, which sets this variable to the name of the called sub. our $AUTOLOAD; # Set $VERSION and everything export-related in a BEGIN block for robustness # against circular module loading (not that we load any modules, but # consistency is good). BEGIN { $VERSION = '4.04'; # All of the basic supported constants, used in %EXPORT_TAGS. my @colorlist = qw( CLEAR RESET BOLD DARK FAINT ITALIC UNDERLINE UNDERSCORE BLINK REVERSE CONCEALED BLACK RED GREEN YELLOW BLUE MAGENTA CYAN WHITE ON_BLACK ON_RED ON_GREEN ON_YELLOW ON_BLUE ON_MAGENTA ON_CYAN ON_WHITE BRIGHT_BLACK BRIGHT_RED BRIGHT_GREEN BRIGHT_YELLOW BRIGHT_BLUE BRIGHT_MAGENTA BRIGHT_CYAN BRIGHT_WHITE ON_BRIGHT_BLACK ON_BRIGHT_RED ON_BRIGHT_GREEN ON_BRIGHT_YELLOW ON_BRIGHT_BLUE ON_BRIGHT_MAGENTA ON_BRIGHT_CYAN ON_BRIGHT_WHITE ); # 256-color constants, used in %EXPORT_TAGS. my @colorlist256 = ( (map { ("ANSI$_", "ON_ANSI$_") } 0 .. 15), (map { ("GREY$_", "ON_GREY$_") } 0 .. 23), ); for my $r (0 .. 5) { for my $g (0 .. 5) { push(@colorlist256, map { ("RGB$r$g$_", "ON_RGB$r$g$_") } 0 .. 5); } } # Exported symbol configuration. @ISA = qw(Exporter); @EXPORT = qw(color colored); @EXPORT_OK = qw(uncolor colorstrip colorvalid coloralias); %EXPORT_TAGS = ( constants => \@colorlist, constants256 => \@colorlist256, pushpop => [@colorlist, qw(PUSHCOLOR POPCOLOR LOCALCOLOR)], ); Exporter::export_ok_tags('pushpop', 'constants256'); } ############################################################################## # Package variables ############################################################################## # If this is set, any color changes will implicitly push the current color # onto the stack and then pop it at the end of the constant sequence, just as # if LOCALCOLOR were used. our $AUTOLOCAL; # Caller sets this to force a reset at the end of each constant sequence. our $AUTORESET; # Caller sets this to force colors to be reset at the end of each line. our $EACHLINE; ############################################################################## # Internal data structures ############################################################################## # This module does quite a bit of initialization at the time it is first # loaded, primarily to set up the package-global %ATTRIBUTES hash. The # entries for 256-color names are easier to handle programmatically, and # custom colors are also imported from the environment if any are set. # All basic supported attributes, including aliases. #<<< our %ATTRIBUTES = ( 'clear' => 0, 'reset' => 0, 'bold' => 1, 'dark' => 2, 'faint' => 2, 'italic' => 3, 'underline' => 4, 'underscore' => 4, 'blink' => 5, 'reverse' => 7, 'concealed' => 8, 'black' => 30, 'on_black' => 40, 'red' => 31, 'on_red' => 41, 'green' => 32, 'on_green' => 42, 'yellow' => 33, 'on_yellow' => 43, 'blue' => 34, 'on_blue' => 44, 'magenta' => 35, 'on_magenta' => 45, 'cyan' => 36, 'on_cyan' => 46, 'white' => 37, 'on_white' => 47, 'bright_black' => 90, 'on_bright_black' => 100, 'bright_red' => 91, 'on_bright_red' => 101, 'bright_green' => 92, 'on_bright_green' => 102, 'bright_yellow' => 93, 'on_bright_yellow' => 103, 'bright_blue' => 94, 'on_bright_blue' => 104, 'bright_magenta' => 95, 'on_bright_magenta' => 105, 'bright_cyan' => 96, 'on_bright_cyan' => 106, 'bright_white' => 97, 'on_bright_white' => 107, ); #>>> # Generating the 256-color codes involves a lot of codes and offsets that are # not helped by turning them into constants. # The first 16 256-color codes are duplicates of the 16 ANSI colors, # included for completeness. for my $code (0 .. 15) { $ATTRIBUTES{"ansi$code"} = "38;5;$code"; $ATTRIBUTES{"on_ansi$code"} = "48;5;$code"; } # 256-color RGB colors. Red, green, and blue can each be values 0 through 5, # and the resulting 216 colors start with color 16. for my $r (0 .. 5) { for my $g (0 .. 5) { for my $b (0 .. 5) { my $code = 16 + (6 * 6 * $r) + (6 * $g) + $b; $ATTRIBUTES{"rgb$r$g$b"} = "38;5;$code"; $ATTRIBUTES{"on_rgb$r$g$b"} = "48;5;$code"; } } } # The last 256-color codes are 24 shades of grey. for my $n (0 .. 23) { my $code = $n + 232; $ATTRIBUTES{"grey$n"} = "38;5;$code"; $ATTRIBUTES{"on_grey$n"} = "48;5;$code"; } # Reverse lookup. Alphabetically first name for a sequence is preferred. our %ATTRIBUTES_R; for my $attr (reverse sort keys %ATTRIBUTES) { $ATTRIBUTES_R{ $ATTRIBUTES{$attr} } = $attr; } # Import any custom colors set in the environment. our %ALIASES; if (exists $ENV{ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES}) { my $spec = $ENV{ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES}; $spec =~ s{\s+}{}xmsg; # Error reporting here is an interesting question. Use warn rather than # carp because carp would report the line of the use or require, which # doesn't help anyone understand what's going on, whereas seeing this code # will be more helpful. ## no critic (ErrorHandling::RequireCarping) for my $definition (split m{,}xms, $spec) { my ($new, $old) = split m{=}xms, $definition, 2; if (!$new || !$old) { warn qq{Bad color mapping "$definition"}; } else { my $result = eval { coloralias($new, $old) }; if (!$result) { my $error = $@; $error =~ s{ [ ] at [ ] .* }{}xms; warn qq{$error in "$definition"}; } } } } # Stores the current color stack maintained by PUSHCOLOR and POPCOLOR. This # is global and therefore not threadsafe. our @COLORSTACK; ############################################################################## # Implementation (constant form) ############################################################################## # Time to have fun! We now want to define the constant subs, which are named # the same as the attributes above but in all caps. Each constant sub needs # to act differently depending on whether $AUTORESET is set. Without # autoreset: # # BLUE "text\n" ==> "\e[34mtext\n" # # If $AUTORESET is set, we should instead get: # # BLUE "text\n" ==> "\e[34mtext\n\e[0m" # # The sub also needs to handle the case where it has no arguments correctly. # Maintaining all of this as separate subs would be a major nightmare, as well # as duplicate the %ATTRIBUTES hash, so instead we define an AUTOLOAD sub to # define the constant subs on demand. To do that, we check the name of the # called sub against the list of attributes, and if it's an all-caps version # of one of them, we define the sub on the fly and then run it. # # If the environment variable ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED is set to a true value, # just return the arguments without adding any escape sequences. This is to # make it easier to write scripts that also work on systems without any ANSI # support, like Windows consoles. # ## no critic (ClassHierarchies::ProhibitAutoloading) ## no critic (Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking) sub AUTOLOAD { my ($sub, $attr) = $AUTOLOAD =~ m{ \A ([\w:]*::([[:upper:]\d_]+)) \z }xms; # Check if we were called with something that doesn't look like an # attribute. if (!($attr && defined($ATTRIBUTES{ lc $attr }))) { croak("undefined subroutine &$AUTOLOAD called"); } # If colors are disabled, just return the input. Do this without # installing a sub for (marginal, unbenchmarked) speed. if ($ENV{ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED}) { return join(q{}, @_); } # We've untainted the name of the sub. $AUTOLOAD = $sub; # Figure out the ANSI string to set the desired attribute. my $escape = "\e[" . $ATTRIBUTES{ lc $attr } . 'm'; # Save the current value of $@. We can't just use local since we want to # restore it before dispatching to the newly-created sub. (The caller may # be colorizing output that includes $@.) my $eval_err = $@; # Generate the constant sub, which should still recognize some of our # package variables. Use string eval to avoid a dependency on # Sub::Install, even though it makes it somewhat less readable. ## no critic (BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitStringyEval) ## no critic (ValuesAndExpressions::ProhibitImplicitNewlines) my $eval_result = eval qq{ sub $AUTOLOAD { if (\$ENV{ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED}) { return join(q{}, \@_); } elsif (\$AUTOLOCAL && \@_) { return PUSHCOLOR('$escape') . join(q{}, \@_) . POPCOLOR; } elsif (\$AUTORESET && \@_) { return '$escape' . join(q{}, \@_) . "\e[0m"; } else { return '$escape' . join(q{}, \@_); } } 1; }; # Failure is an internal error, not a problem with the caller. ## no critic (ErrorHandling::RequireCarping) if (!$eval_result) { die "failed to generate constant $attr: $@"; } # Restore $@. ## no critic (Variables::RequireLocalizedPunctuationVars) $@ = $eval_err; # Dispatch to the newly-created sub. ## no critic (References::ProhibitDoubleSigils) goto &$AUTOLOAD; } ## use critic (Subroutines::RequireArgUnpacking) # Append a new color to the top of the color stack and return the top of # the stack. # # $text - Any text we're applying colors to, with color escapes prepended # # Returns: The text passed in sub PUSHCOLOR { my (@text) = @_; my $text = join(q{}, @text); # Extract any number of color-setting escape sequences from the start of # the string. my ($color) = $text =~ m{ \A ( (?:\e\[ [\d;]+ m)+ ) }xms; # If we already have a stack, append these escapes to the set from the top # of the stack. This way, each position in the stack stores the complete # enabled colors for that stage, at the cost of some potential # inefficiency. if (@COLORSTACK) { $color = $COLORSTACK[-1] . $color; } # Push the color onto the stack. push(@COLORSTACK, $color); return $text; } # Pop the color stack and return the new top of the stack (or reset, if # the stack is empty). # # @text - Any text we're applying colors to # # Returns: The concatenation of @text prepended with the new stack color sub POPCOLOR { my (@text) = @_; pop(@COLORSTACK); if (@COLORSTACK) { return $COLORSTACK[-1] . join(q{}, @text); } else { return RESET(@text); } } # Surround arguments with a push and a pop. The effect will be to reset the # colors to whatever was on the color stack before this sequence of colors was # applied. # # @text - Any text we're applying colors to # # Returns: The concatenation of the text and the proper color reset sequence. sub LOCALCOLOR { my (@text) = @_; return PUSHCOLOR(join(q{}, @text)) . POPCOLOR(); } ############################################################################## # Implementation (attribute string form) ############################################################################## # Return the escape code for a given set of color attributes. # # @codes - A list of possibly space-separated color attributes # # Returns: The escape sequence setting those color attributes # undef if no escape sequences were given # Throws: Text exception for any invalid attribute sub color { my (@codes) = @_; @codes = map { split } @codes; # Return the empty string if colors are disabled. if ($ENV{ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED}) { return q{}; } # Build the attribute string from semicolon-separated numbers. my $attribute = q{}; for my $code (@codes) { $code = lc($code); if (defined($ATTRIBUTES{$code})) { $attribute .= $ATTRIBUTES{$code} . q{;}; } elsif (defined($ALIASES{$code})) { $attribute .= $ALIASES{$code} . q{;}; } else { croak("Invalid attribute name $code"); } } # We added one too many semicolons for simplicity. Remove the last one. chop($attribute); # Return undef if there were no attributes. return ($attribute ne q{}) ? "\e[${attribute}m" : undef; } # Return a list of named color attributes for a given set of escape codes. # Escape sequences can be given with or without enclosing "\e[" and "m". The # empty escape sequence '' or "\e[m" gives an empty list of attrs. # # There is one special case. 256-color codes start with 38 or 48, followed by # a 5 and then the 256-color code. # # @escapes - A list of escape sequences or escape sequence numbers # # Returns: An array of attribute names corresponding to those sequences # Throws: Text exceptions on invalid escape sequences or unknown colors sub uncolor { my (@escapes) = @_; my (@nums, @result); # Walk the list of escapes and build a list of attribute numbers. for my $escape (@escapes) { $escape =~ s{ \A \e\[ }{}xms; $escape =~ s{ m \z } {}xms; my ($attrs) = $escape =~ m{ \A ((?:\d+;)* \d*) \z }xms; if (!defined($attrs)) { croak("Bad escape sequence $escape"); } # Pull off 256-color codes (38;5;n or 48;5;n) as a unit. push(@nums, $attrs =~ m{ ( 0*[34]8;0*5;\d+ | \d+ ) (?: ; | \z ) }xmsg); } # Now, walk the list of numbers and convert them to attribute names. # Strip leading zeroes from any of the numbers. (xterm, at least, allows # leading zeroes to be added to any number in an escape sequence.) for my $num (@nums) { $num =~ s{ ( \A | ; ) 0+ (\d) }{$1$2}xmsg; my $name = $ATTRIBUTES_R{$num}; if (!defined($name)) { croak("No name for escape sequence $num"); } push(@result, $name); } # Return the attribute names. return @result; } # Given a string and a set of attributes, returns the string surrounded by # escape codes to set those attributes and then clear them at the end of the # string. The attributes can be given either as an array ref as the first # argument or as a list as the second and subsequent arguments. # # If $EACHLINE is set, insert a reset before each occurrence of the string # $EACHLINE and the starting attribute code after the string $EACHLINE, so # that no attribute crosses line delimiters (this is often desirable if the # output is to be piped to a pager or some other program). # # $first - An anonymous array of attributes or the text to color # @rest - The text to color or the list of attributes # # Returns: The text, concatenated if necessary, surrounded by escapes to set # the desired colors and reset them afterwards # Throws: Text exception on invalid attributes sub colored { my ($first, @rest) = @_; my ($string, @codes); if (ref($first) && ref($first) eq 'ARRAY') { @codes = @{$first}; $string = join(q{}, @rest); } else { $string = $first; @codes = @rest; } # Return the string unmolested if colors are disabled. if ($ENV{ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED}) { return $string; } # Find the attribute string for our colors. my $attr = color(@codes); # If $EACHLINE is defined, split the string on line boundaries, suppress # empty segments, and then colorize each of the line sections. if (defined($EACHLINE)) { my @text = map { ($_ ne $EACHLINE) ? $attr . $_ . "\e[0m" : $_ } grep { length > 0 } split(m{ (\Q$EACHLINE\E) }xms, $string); return join(q{}, @text); } else { return $attr . $string . "\e[0m"; } } # Define a new color alias, or return the value of an existing alias. # # $alias - The color alias to define # $color - The standard color the alias will correspond to (optional) # # Returns: The standard color value of the alias # undef if one argument was given and the alias was not recognized # Throws: Text exceptions for invalid alias names, attempts to use a # standard color name as an alias, or an unknown standard color name sub coloralias { my ($alias, $color) = @_; if (!defined($color)) { if (!exists $ALIASES{$alias}) { return; } else { return $ATTRIBUTES_R{ $ALIASES{$alias} }; } } if ($alias !~ m{ \A [\w._-]+ \z }xms) { croak(qq{Invalid alias name "$alias"}); } elsif ($ATTRIBUTES{$alias}) { croak(qq{Cannot alias standard color "$alias"}); } elsif (!exists $ATTRIBUTES{$color}) { croak(qq{Invalid attribute name "$color"}); } $ALIASES{$alias} = $ATTRIBUTES{$color}; return $color; } # Given a string, strip the ANSI color codes out of that string and return the # result. This removes only ANSI color codes, not movement codes and other # escape sequences. # # @string - The list of strings to sanitize # # Returns: (array) The strings stripped of ANSI color escape sequences # (scalar) The same, concatenated sub colorstrip { my (@string) = @_; for my $string (@string) { $string =~ s{ \e\[ [\d;]* m }{}xmsg; } return wantarray ? @string : join(q{}, @string); } # Given a list of color attributes (arguments for color, for instance), return # true if they're all valid or false if any of them are invalid. # # @codes - A list of color attributes, possibly space-separated # # Returns: True if all the attributes are valid, false otherwise. sub colorvalid { my (@codes) = @_; @codes = map { split(q{ }, lc) } @codes; for my $code (@codes) { if (!(defined($ATTRIBUTES{$code}) || defined($ALIASES{$code}))) { return; } } return 1; } ############################################################################## # Module return value and documentation ############################################################################## # Ensure we evaluate to true. 1; __END__ =head1 NAME Term::ANSIColor - Color screen output using ANSI escape sequences =for stopwords cyan colorize namespace runtime TMTOWTDI cmd.exe cmd.exe. 4nt.exe. 4nt.exe command.com NT ESC Delvare SSH OpenSSH aixterm ECMA-048 Fraktur overlining Zenin reimplemented Allbery PUSHCOLOR POPCOLOR LOCALCOLOR openmethods.com openmethods.com. grey ATTR urxvt mistyped prepending Bareword filehandle Cygwin Starsinic aterm rxvt CPAN RGB Solarized Whitespace alphanumerics undef =head1 SYNOPSIS use Term::ANSIColor; print color('bold blue'); print "This text is bold blue.\n"; print color('reset'); print "This text is normal.\n"; print colored("Yellow on magenta.", 'yellow on_magenta'), "\n"; print "This text is normal.\n"; print colored(['yellow on_magenta'], 'Yellow on magenta.', "\n"); print colored(['red on_bright_yellow'], 'Red on bright yellow.', "\n"); print colored(['bright_red on_black'], 'Bright red on black.', "\n"); print "\n"; # Map escape sequences back to color names. use Term::ANSIColor 1.04 qw(uncolor); my $names = uncolor('01;31'); print join(q{ }, @{$names}), "\n"; # Strip all color escape sequences. use Term::ANSIColor 2.01 qw(colorstrip); print colorstrip("\e[1mThis is bold\e[0m"), "\n"; # Determine whether a color is valid. use Term::ANSIColor 2.02 qw(colorvalid); my $valid = colorvalid('blue bold', 'on_magenta'); print "Color string is ", $valid ? "valid\n" : "invalid\n"; # Create new aliases for colors. use Term::ANSIColor 4.00 qw(coloralias); coloralias('alert', 'red'); print "Alert is ", coloralias('alert'), "\n"; print colored("This is in red.", 'alert'), "\n"; use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants); print BOLD, BLUE, "This text is in bold blue.\n", RESET; use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants); { local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET = 1; print BOLD BLUE "This text is in bold blue.\n"; print "This text is normal.\n"; } use Term::ANSIColor 2.00 qw(:pushpop); print PUSHCOLOR RED ON_GREEN "This text is red on green.\n"; print PUSHCOLOR BRIGHT_BLUE "This text is bright blue on green.\n"; print RESET BRIGHT_BLUE "This text is just bright blue.\n"; print POPCOLOR "Back to red on green.\n"; print LOCALCOLOR GREEN ON_BLUE "This text is green on blue.\n"; print "This text is red on green.\n"; { local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL = 1; print ON_BLUE "This text is red on blue.\n"; print "This text is red on green.\n"; } print POPCOLOR "Back to whatever we started as.\n"; =head1 DESCRIPTION This module has two interfaces, one through color() and colored() and the other through constants. It also offers the utility functions uncolor(), colorstrip(), colorvalid(), and coloralias(), which have to be explicitly imported to be used (see L). See L for the versions of Term::ANSIColor that introduced particular features and the versions of Perl that included them. =head2 Supported Colors Terminal emulators that support color divide into three types: ones that support only eight colors, ones that support sixteen, and ones that support 256. This module provides the ANSI escape codes for all of them. These colors are referred to as ANSI colors 0 through 7 (normal), 8 through 15 (16-color), and 16 through 255 (256-color). Unfortunately, interpretation of colors 0 through 7 often depends on whether the emulator supports eight colors or sixteen colors. Emulators that only support eight colors (such as the Linux console) will display colors 0 through 7 with normal brightness and ignore colors 8 through 15, treating them the same as white. Emulators that support 16 colors, such as gnome-terminal, normally display colors 0 through 7 as dim or darker versions and colors 8 through 15 as normal brightness. On such emulators, the "normal" white (color 7) usually is shown as pale grey, requiring bright white (15) to be used to get a real white color. Bright black usually is a dark grey color, although some terminals display it as pure black. Some sixteen-color terminal emulators also treat normal yellow (color 3) as orange or brown, and bright yellow (color 11) as yellow. Following the normal convention of sixteen-color emulators, this module provides a pair of attributes for each color. For every normal color (0 through 7), the corresponding bright color (8 through 15) is obtained by prepending the string C to the normal color name. For example, C is color 1 and C is color 9. The same applies for background colors: C is the normal color and C is the bright color. Capitalize these strings for the constant interface. For 256-color emulators, this module additionally provides C through C, which are the same as colors 0 through 15 in sixteen-color emulators but use the 256-color escape syntax, C through C ranging from nearly black to nearly white, and a set of RGB colors. The RGB colors are of the form C> where I, I, and I are numbers from 0 to 5 giving the intensity of red, green, and blue. C variants of all of these colors are also provided. These colors may be ignored completely on non-256-color terminals or may be misinterpreted and produce random behavior. Additional attributes such as blink, italic, or bold may not work with the 256-color palette. There is unfortunately no way to know whether the current emulator supports more than eight colors, which makes the choice of colors difficult. The most conservative choice is to use only the regular colors, which are at least displayed on all emulators. However, they will appear dark in sixteen-color terminal emulators, including most common emulators in UNIX X environments. If you know the display is one of those emulators, you may wish to use the bright variants instead. Even better, offer the user a way to configure the colors for a given application to fit their terminal emulator. =head2 Function Interface The function interface uses attribute strings to describe the colors and text attributes to assign to text. The recognized non-color attributes are clear, reset, bold, dark, faint, italic, underline, underscore, blink, reverse, and concealed. Clear and reset (reset to default attributes), dark and faint (dim and saturated), and underline and underscore are equivalent, so use whichever is the most intuitive to you. Note that not all attributes are supported by all terminal types, and some terminals may not support any of these sequences. Dark and faint, italic, blink, and concealed in particular are frequently not implemented. The recognized normal foreground color attributes (colors 0 to 7) are: black red green yellow blue magenta cyan white The corresponding bright foreground color attributes (colors 8 to 15) are: bright_black bright_red bright_green bright_yellow bright_blue bright_magenta bright_cyan bright_white The recognized normal background color attributes (colors 0 to 7) are: on_black on_red on_green on yellow on_blue on_magenta on_cyan on_white The recognized bright background color attributes (colors 8 to 15) are: on_bright_black on_bright_red on_bright_green on_bright_yellow on_bright_blue on_bright_magenta on_bright_cyan on_bright_white For 256-color terminals, the recognized foreground colors are: ansi0 .. ansi15 grey0 .. grey23 plus C> for I, I, and I values from 0 to 5, such as C or C. Similarly, the recognized background colors are: on_ansi0 .. on_ansi15 on_grey0 .. on_grey23 plus C> for I, I, and I values from 0 to 5. For any of the above listed attributes, case is not significant. Attributes, once set, last until they are unset (by printing the attribute C or C). Be careful to do this, or otherwise your attribute will last after your script is done running, and people get very annoyed at having their prompt and typing changed to weird colors. =over 4 =item color(ATTR[, ATTR ...]) color() takes any number of strings as arguments and considers them to be space-separated lists of attributes. It then forms and returns the escape sequence to set those attributes. It doesn't print it out, just returns it, so you'll have to print it yourself if you want to. This is so that you can save it as a string, pass it to something else, send it to a file handle, or do anything else with it that you might care to. color() throws an exception if given an invalid attribute. =item colored(STRING, ATTR[, ATTR ...]) =item colored(ATTR-REF, STRING[, STRING...]) As an aid in resetting colors, colored() takes a scalar as the first argument and any number of attribute strings as the second argument and returns the scalar wrapped in escape codes so that the attributes will be set as requested before the string and reset to normal after the string. Alternately, you can pass a reference to an array as the first argument, and then the contents of that array will be taken as attributes and color codes and the remainder of the arguments as text to colorize. Normally, colored() just puts attribute codes at the beginning and end of the string, but if you set $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE to some string, that string will be considered the line delimiter and the attribute will be set at the beginning of each line of the passed string and reset at the end of each line. This is often desirable if the output contains newlines and you're using background colors, since a background color that persists across a newline is often interpreted by the terminal as providing the default background color for the next line. Programs like pagers can also be confused by attributes that span lines. Normally you'll want to set $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE to C<"\n"> to use this feature. =item uncolor(ESCAPE) uncolor() performs the opposite translation as color(), turning escape sequences into a list of strings corresponding to the attributes being set by those sequences. =item colorstrip(STRING[, STRING ...]) colorstrip() removes all color escape sequences from the provided strings, returning the modified strings separately in array context or joined together in scalar context. Its arguments are not modified. =item colorvalid(ATTR[, ATTR ...]) colorvalid() takes attribute strings the same as color() and returns true if all attributes are known and false otherwise. =item coloralias(ALIAS[, ATTR]) If ATTR is specified, coloralias() sets up an alias of ALIAS for the standard color ATTR. From that point forward, ALIAS can be passed into color(), colored(), and colorvalid() and will have the same meaning as ATTR. One possible use of this facility is to give more meaningful names to the 256-color RGB colors. Only alphanumerics, C<.>, C<_>, and C<-> are allowed in alias names. If ATTR is not specified, coloralias() returns the standard color name to which ALIAS is aliased, if any, or undef if ALIAS does not exist. This is the same facility used by the ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES environment variable (see L below) but can be used at runtime, not just when the module is loaded. Later invocations of coloralias() with the same ALIAS will override earlier aliases. There is no way to remove an alias. Aliases have no effect on the return value of uncolor(). B: Aliases are global and affect all callers in the same process. There is no way to set an alias limited to a particular block of code or a particular object. =back =head2 Constant Interface Alternately, if you import C<:constants>, you can use the following constants directly: CLEAR RESET BOLD DARK FAINT ITALIC UNDERLINE UNDERSCORE BLINK REVERSE CONCEALED BLACK RED GREEN YELLOW BLUE MAGENTA CYAN WHITE BRIGHT_BLACK BRIGHT_RED BRIGHT_GREEN BRIGHT_YELLOW BRIGHT_BLUE BRIGHT_MAGENTA BRIGHT_CYAN BRIGHT_WHITE ON_BLACK ON_RED ON_GREEN ON_YELLOW ON_BLUE ON_MAGENTA ON_CYAN ON_WHITE ON_BRIGHT_BLACK ON_BRIGHT_RED ON_BRIGHT_GREEN ON_BRIGHT_YELLOW ON_BRIGHT_BLUE ON_BRIGHT_MAGENTA ON_BRIGHT_CYAN ON_BRIGHT_WHITE These are the same as color('attribute') and can be used if you prefer typing: print BOLD BLUE ON_WHITE "Text", RESET, "\n"; to print colored ("Text", 'bold blue on_white'), "\n"; (Note that the newline is kept separate to avoid confusing the terminal as described above since a background color is being used.) If you import C<:constants256>, you can use the following constants directly: ANSI0 .. ANSI15 GREY0 .. GREY23 RGBXYZ (for X, Y, and Z values from 0 to 5, like RGB000 or RGB515) ON_ANSI0 .. ON_ANSI15 ON_GREY0 .. ON_GREY23 ON_RGBXYZ (for X, Y, and Z values from 0 to 5) Note that C<:constants256> does not include the other constants, so if you want to mix both, you need to include C<:constants> as well. You may want to explicitly import at least C, as in: use Term::ANSIColor 4.00 qw(RESET :constants256); When using the constants, if you don't want to have to remember to add the C<, RESET> at the end of each print line, you can set $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET to a true value. Then, the display mode will automatically be reset if there is no comma after the constant. In other words, with that variable set: print BOLD BLUE "Text\n"; will reset the display mode afterward, whereas: print BOLD, BLUE, "Text\n"; will not. If you are using background colors, you will probably want to either use say() (in newer versions of Perl) or print the newline with a separate print statement to avoid confusing the terminal. If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set (see below), it takes precedence over $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET, and the latter is ignored. The subroutine interface has the advantage over the constants interface in that only two subroutines are exported into your namespace, versus thirty-eight in the constants interface. On the flip side, the constants interface has the advantage of better compile time error checking, since misspelled names of colors or attributes in calls to color() and colored() won't be caught until runtime whereas misspelled names of constants will be caught at compile time. So, pollute your namespace with almost two dozen subroutines that you may not even use that often, or risk a silly bug by mistyping an attribute. Your choice, TMTOWTDI after all. =head2 The Color Stack You can import C<:pushpop> and maintain a stack of colors using PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR. PUSHCOLOR takes the attribute string that starts its argument and pushes it onto a stack of attributes. POPCOLOR removes the top of the stack and restores the previous attributes set by the argument of a prior PUSHCOLOR. LOCALCOLOR surrounds its argument in a PUSHCOLOR and POPCOLOR so that the color resets afterward. If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set, each sequence of color constants will be implicitly preceded by LOCALCOLOR. In other words, the following: { local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL = 1; print BLUE "Text\n"; } is equivalent to: print LOCALCOLOR BLUE "Text\n"; If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set, it takes precedence over $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET, and the latter is ignored. When using PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR, it's particularly important to not put commas between the constants. print PUSHCOLOR BLUE "Text\n"; will correctly push BLUE onto the top of the stack. print PUSHCOLOR, BLUE, "Text\n"; # wrong! will not, and a subsequent pop won't restore the correct attributes. PUSHCOLOR pushes the attributes set by its argument, which is normally a string of color constants. It can't ask the terminal what the current attributes are. =head1 DIAGNOSTICS =over 4 =item Bad color mapping %s (W) The specified color mapping from ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES is not valid and could not be parsed. It was ignored. =item Bad escape sequence %s (F) You passed an invalid ANSI escape sequence to uncolor(). =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use (F) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as: $Foobar = FOOBAR . "This line should be blue\n"; or: @Foobar = FOOBAR, "This line should be blue\n"; This will only show up under use strict (another good reason to run under use strict). =item Cannot alias standard color %s (F) The alias name passed to coloralias() matches a standard color name. Standard color names cannot be aliased. =item Cannot alias standard color %s in %s (W) The same, but in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color mapping was ignored. =item Invalid alias name %s (F) You passed an invalid alias name to coloralias(). Alias names must consist only of alphanumerics, C<.>, C<->, and C<_>. =item Invalid alias name %s in %s (W) You specified an invalid alias name on the left hand of the equal sign in a color mapping in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color mapping was ignored. =item Invalid attribute name %s (F) You passed an invalid attribute name to color(), colored(), or coloralias(). =item Invalid attribute name %s in %s (W) You specified an invalid attribute name on the right hand of the equal sign in a color mapping in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color mapping was ignored. =item Name "%s" used only once: possible typo (W) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as: print FOOBAR "This text is color FOOBAR\n"; It's probably better to always use commas after constant names in order to force the next error. =item No comma allowed after filehandle (F) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as: print FOOBAR, "This text is color FOOBAR\n"; Generating this fatal compile error is one of the main advantages of using the constants interface, since you'll immediately know if you mistype a color name. =item No name for escape sequence %s (F) The ANSI escape sequence passed to uncolor() contains escapes which aren't recognized and can't be translated to names. =back =head1 ENVIRONMENT =over 4 =item ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES This environment variable allows the user to specify custom color aliases that will be understood by color(), colored(), and colorvalid(). None of the other functions will be affected, and no new color constants will be created. The custom colors are aliases for existing color names; no new escape sequences can be introduced. Only alphanumerics, C<.>, C<_>, and C<-> are allowed in alias names. The format is: ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES='newcolor1=oldcolor1,newcolor2=oldcolor2' Whitespace is ignored. For example the L colors can be mapped with: ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES='\ base00=bright_yellow, on_base00=on_bright_yellow,\ base01=bright_green, on_base01=on_bright_green, \ base02=black, on_base02=on_black, \ base03=bright_black, on_base03=on_bright_black, \ base0=bright_blue, on_base0=on_bright_blue, \ base1=bright_cyan, on_base1=on_bright_cyan, \ base2=white, on_base2=on_white, \ base3=bright_white, on_base3=on_bright_white, \ orange=bright_red, on_orange=on_bright_red, \ violet=bright_magenta,on_violet=on_bright_magenta' This environment variable is read and applied when the Term::ANSIColor module is loaded and is then subsequently ignored. Changes to ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES after the module is loaded will have no effect. See coloralias() for an equivalent facility that can be used at runtime. =item ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED If this environment variable is set to a true value, all of the functions defined by this module (color(), colored(), and all of the constants not previously used in the program) will not output any escape sequences and instead will just return the empty string or pass through the original text as appropriate. This is intended to support easy use of scripts using this module on platforms that don't support ANSI escape sequences. =back =head1 COMPATIBILITY Term::ANSIColor was first included with Perl in Perl 5.6.0. The uncolor() function and support for ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED were added in Term::ANSIColor 1.04, included in Perl 5.8.0. Support for dark was added in Term::ANSIColor 1.08, included in Perl 5.8.4. The color stack, including the C<:pushpop> import tag, PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, LOCALCOLOR, and the $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL variable, was added in Term::ANSIColor 2.00, included in Perl 5.10.1. colorstrip() was added in Term::ANSIColor 2.01 and colorvalid() was added in Term::ANSIColor 2.02, both included in Perl 5.11.0. Support for colors 8 through 15 (the C variants) was added in Term::ANSIColor 3.00, included in Perl 5.13.3. Support for italic was added in Term::ANSIColor 3.02, included in Perl 5.17.1. Support for colors 16 through 256 (the C, C, and C colors), the C<:constants256> import tag, the coloralias() function, and support for the ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES environment variable were added in Term::ANSIColor 4.00, included in Perl 5.17.8. $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL was changed to take precedence over $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET, rather than the other way around, in Term::ANSIColor 4.00, included in Perl 5.17.8. =head1 RESTRICTIONS It would be nice if one could leave off the commas around the constants entirely and just say: print BOLD BLUE ON_WHITE "Text\n" RESET; but the syntax of Perl doesn't allow this. You need a comma after the string. (Of course, you may consider it a bug that commas between all the constants aren't required, in which case you may feel free to insert commas unless you're using $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET or PUSHCOLOR/POPCOLOR.) For easier debugging, you may prefer to always use the commas when not setting $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET or PUSHCOLOR/POPCOLOR so that you'll get a fatal compile error rather than a warning. It's not possible to use this module to embed formatting and color attributes using Perl formats. They replace the escape character with a space (as documented in L), resulting in garbled output from the unrecognized attribute. Even if there were a way around that problem, the format doesn't know that the non-printing escape sequence is zero-length and would incorrectly format the output. For formatted output using color or other attributes, either use sprintf() instead or use formline() and then add the color or other attributes after formatting and before output. =head1 NOTES The codes generated by this module are standard terminal control codes, complying with ECMA-048 and ISO 6429 (generally referred to as "ANSI color" for the color codes). The non-color control codes (bold, dark, italic, underline, and reverse) are part of the earlier ANSI X3.64 standard for control sequences for video terminals and peripherals. Note that not all displays are ISO 6429-compliant, or even X3.64-compliant (or are even attempting to be so). This module will not work as expected on displays that do not honor these escape sequences, such as cmd.exe, 4nt.exe, and command.com under either Windows NT or Windows 2000. They may just be ignored, or they may display as an ESC character followed by some apparent garbage. Jean Delvare provided the following table of different common terminal emulators and their support for the various attributes and others have helped me flesh it out: clear bold faint under blink reverse conceal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ xterm yes yes no yes yes yes yes linux yes yes yes bold yes yes no rxvt yes yes no yes bold/black yes no dtterm yes yes yes yes reverse yes yes teraterm yes reverse no yes rev/red yes no aixterm kinda normal no yes no yes yes PuTTY yes color no yes no yes no Windows yes no no no no yes no Cygwin SSH yes yes no color color color yes Terminal.app yes yes no yes yes yes yes Windows is Windows telnet, Cygwin SSH is the OpenSSH implementation under Cygwin on Windows NT, and Mac Terminal is the Terminal application in Mac OS X. Where the entry is other than yes or no, that emulator displays the given attribute as something else instead. Note that on an aixterm, clear doesn't reset colors; you have to explicitly set the colors back to what you want. More entries in this table are welcome. Support for code 3 (italic) is rare and therefore not mentioned in that table. It is not believed to be fully supported by any of the terminals listed, although it's displayed as green in the Linux console, but it is reportedly supported by urxvt. Note that codes 6 (rapid blink) and 9 (strike-through) are specified in ANSI X3.64 and ECMA-048 but are not commonly supported by most displays and emulators and therefore aren't supported by this module at the present time. ECMA-048 also specifies a large number of other attributes, including a sequence of attributes for font changes, Fraktur characters, double-underlining, framing, circling, and overlining. As none of these attributes are widely supported or useful, they also aren't currently supported by this module. Most modern X terminal emulators support 256 colors. Known to not support those colors are aterm, rxvt, Terminal.app, and TTY/VC. =head1 AUTHORS Original idea (using constants) by Zenin, reimplemented using subs by Russ Allbery , and then combined with the original idea by Russ with input from Zenin. 256-color support is based on work by Kurt Starsinic. Russ Allbery now maintains this module. PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR were contributed by openmethods.com voice solutions. =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright 1996 Zenin Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 Russ Allbery Copyright 2012 Kurt Starsinic This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =head1 SEE ALSO The CPAN module L provides a different and more comprehensive interface for 256-color emulators that may be more convenient. The CPAN module L provides ANSI color (and other escape sequence) support in the Win32 Console environment. ECMA-048 is available on-line (at least at the time of this writing) at L. ISO 6429 is available from ISO for a charge; the author of this module does not own a copy of it. Since the source material for ISO 6429 was ECMA-048 and the latter is available for free, there seems little reason to obtain the ISO standard. The 256-color control sequences are documented at L (search for 256-color). The current version of this module is always available from its web site at L. It is also part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0. =cut