According to the ZSH manual, for ZSH V5.1+ colors should be able to be defined as a # followed by an RGB color code as a hexadecimal triplet, for eg. #ff00ff. However, I have found no documentation that provides a concrete example to demonstrate how exactly this is achieved, and no matter how I try to define a color variable, it never seems to produce the color I want (or any color for that matter). I have tried all of the following formats and none have worked so far when I attempt to use them in %F or %K in the prompt definition (eg. PS1="%F{$var} >> %f")
var=#ff00ff
var="#ff00ff"
var='#ff00ff'
var=$"#ff00ff"
var=$'#ff00ff'
I am running the shell in the kitty terminal emulator, which has truecolor support enabled by default.
All 255 color numbers (eg. var=231) in zsh work just fine, color names (eg. yellow) as well.
I am currently running ZSH V5.5.1.
I have looked for information on the zsh manual page [] and so far nohing more than a mention about it is provided.
I'm looking for an example of how to define hex code colors (and assign them to variables) in no uncertain terms.
After some more experimentation, I determined that the problem was partly the documentation, and partly the version. In essence, to declare hex triples in zsh you use the format var='#f0f0f0'. For this to work it is required that you have ZSH V5.7+, despite what the documentation may say about it working in ZSH V5.1+
I hope this answer will be helpful to anybody else who encounters this difficulty.
I have a make project creating binaries using various back-ends…
→ C, C++, csharp, java… on linux using mono csharp compiler, gcc, etc…
if I choose a single back-end (example csharp) by open a XXX.cs file than the make-output-error parser working OK… this mean error-output is parsed proper and I can jump to the error right away…
if I choose the toplevel make… (open vim without file on a toplevel directory) than the make-output-error parser does not work properly.
I discovered that the vim errorformat variable has changed between 1. and 2.
and now my question: how I can tell vim to recognize the error-output from C,C++,CSharp… and Java during run of the toplevel make ?
Whatever filetype plugin you have for C# is probably changing the value of :help 'errorformat' to work with C# compilers while you are left with the default value when running your top level make which, I assume, outputs errors as-is, without any filtering.
In order for Vim to interpret correctly the potentially mixed output of all your compilers you could:
set errorformat to a value that would work with all those formats,
or add a step to your build process that unifies every native output format into a single format that Vim can interpret without effort.
First option, find the errorformat values used by every compiler and prepend them to the default value at startup:
set errorformat^=<efm for c#>
set errorformat^=<efm for cpp>
...
Second option, I've been thinking for many years about writing a program that would do just that but never found the time to even write a README.md. If such a thing doesn't exist you will have to sed and awk your way on your own I'm afraid.
I only need to set a color that will only effect a particular directory not globally.
If you are using Bash in a terminal that supports colors and would like to change the default color for text output to the terminal (not specifically the output of ls) while inside this directory, there is one thing you could do.
The PROMPT_COMMAND variable can be set to execute a command just before printing the prompt. You could use that to check for the current directory and change the terminal color (for instance by assigning the PS1 variable with a prompt that contains non-displayable special codes for selecting a color or echoing said special codes).
PROMPT_COMMAND is documented in the Bash manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html
As for how to assign colors, you should look that up if interested.
This solution may not be what you are looking for, will probably have side effects, and generally speaking, I am not sure it will be that useful changing terminal colors depending on the current directory. The usual solution is to have a prompt that shows the current directory path (or at least the last portion of the path).
I use something similar to the above to change text color depending on which machine I am executing Bash on, as I use ssh a lot from one machine to another over several terminal windows, and color (on a black background) is a good way to remember what machine any given window is connected to.
Is there a way to use ANSI escape codes inside mvwprintw?
mvwprintw(window, 0, 0,"%c[%dmCOLORED_TEXT!\n", 0x1B, 32);//doesn't work
even though:
printf("%c[%dmCOLORED_TEXT\n", 0x1B, 32); //works
This would be for cases where using wattron/wattroff is not convenient; for example, when redirecting output from stdout of a process that outputs such escape codes.
No. The only way to make that work would be to parse the string yourself, turning escape codes back into the appropriate curses commands, to issue along with your output.
One thing you should realize is that those codes, although widely implemented, are not universal. One of the major purposes of curses is to translate its standard commands into series of terminal-specific control codes. So, passing through codes that may or may not correspond to the current terminal type doesn't really fit the curses model. Even more fundamentally, the codes would change the terminal state in a way that curses wouldn't be able to keep track of, so that the contents of its window structures no longer matched what was on screen.
To recognize better the start and the end of output on a commandline, I want to change the color of my prompt, so that it is visibly different from the programs output. As I use zsh, can anyone give me a hint?
Put this in ~/.zshrc:
autoload -U colors && colors
PS1="%{$fg[red]%}%n%{$reset_color%}#%{$fg[blue]%}%m %{$fg[yellow]%}%~ %{$reset_color%}%% "
Supported Colors:
red, blue, green, cyan, yellow, magenta, black, & white (from this answer) although different computers may have different valid options.
Surround color codes (and any other non-printable chars) with %{....%}. This is for the text wrapping to work correctly.
Additionally, here is how you can get this to work with the directory-trimming from here.
PS1="%{$fg[red]%}%n%{$reset_color%}#%{$fg[blue]%}%m %{$fg[yellow]%}%(5~|%-1~/.../%3~|%4~) %{$reset_color%}%% "
Zsh comes with colored prompts builtin. Try
autoload -U promptinit && promptinit
and then prompt -l lists available prompts, -p fire previews the "fire" prompt, -s fire sets it.
When you are ready to add a prompt add something like this below the autoload line above:
prompt fade red
Here's an example of how to set a red prompt:
PS1=$'\e[0;31m$ \e[0m'
The magic is the \e[0;31m (turn on red foreground) and \e[0m (turn off character attributes). These are called escape sequences. Different escape sequences give you different results, from absolute cursor positioning, to color, to being able to change the title bar of your window, and so on.
For more on escape sequences, see the wikipedia entry on ANSI escape codes
The answer by Bryan Oakley above has a glitch as it has already been pointed out and the solution offered by Andrew Marshall though it does not carry the glitch, nevertheless it does not make it obvious for too much customization on the colors used.
As macOS Catalina asks for zsh to be the default shell from now on, I think several more people may want to customize their prompt and might be coming here for an answer. So, I thought I would try to give a broader summary and touch upon other very closely-related notions that allow more customization.
3-Digit Codes for Various Colors.
First of all, here we can find 3-digit codes for various colors: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/124409/194343.
For example, 214 is some kind of orange color.
Foreground and Background.
The other key information is that for Foreground and bacKground colors one can define what they want with F and K respectively. Source is zsh manual on visual effects: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Prompt-Expansion.html#Visual-effects
So, for example, the following two commands
autoload -U colors && colors
export PS1="%F{214}%K{000}%m%F{015}%K{000}:%F{039}%K{000}%~%F{015}%K{000}\$ "
present the hostname in orange with black background, followed by a colon in white with black background, followed by the current working directory in bright blue with black background, followed by the dollar sign in white with black background.
More related information is found below.
Prompt information on the right-hand side. For example, adding a timestamp. See https://superuser.com/a/1251045/290299. Of course, this can be color-coded, for example with some light blue/purple-ish color, like this:
RPROMPT="%F{111}%K{000}[%D{%f/%m/%y}|%#]"
Colors for ls. After reading the manual for ls, one for example can activate the colors for ls using the following two commands:
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=gafacadabaegedabagacad
Finally, as a last remark that I have not tested as I am happy with my configuration, another avenue might be for someone to install the port coreutils from MacPorts and then use gdircolors (source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/174596/194343). (I may edit this last part in the future as all the above are related pieces that make every-day life much more fun and easier to cope with.)
I don't think the autoload -U colors && colors is needed anymore and one can simply do:
PS1="%{%F{red}%}%n%{%f%}#%{%F{blue}%}%m %{%F{yellow}%}%~ %{$%f%}%% "
to achieve the same result as FireDude's answer. See the ZSH documentation for more info.
Try my favorite:
put in
~/.zshrc
this line:
PROMPT='%F{240}%n%F{red}#%F{green}%m:%F{141}%d$ %F{reset}'
don't forget
source ~/.zshrc
to test the changes
you can change the colors/color codes, of course :-)
In order to not waste space in the terminal with special characters to pieces of information, you can differentiate information using multiple colors.
Eg. in order to get this desired effect:
You can do the following to your prompt:
PROMPT='%F{magenta}${PWD/#$HOME/~} %F{green}${vcs_info_msg_0_} %F{cyan}$%F{reset_color} '
The way it works is every time you set a color using $F{myColor} the color from that point onward will stick to that. It's important to add in %{reset_color} at the end so that the input text goes back to the original color (or you could set it to something else if you'd like).
I have found that, with zsh5 (the default one on Debian Jessie), all those solutions works:
$'\e[00m
$fg[white]
$fg{white}
Now, they have a problem: they will move the cursor, resulting in ugly decal when tabbing (for auto-completion). The solution is simply to surround the escape sequences with %{FOOBAR%}. Took me a while to figure this.
For 2nd and 3rd solutions loading colors module is mandatory.
To keep the 1st solution readable, just define variables for the colors you use.
Debian/Ubuntu/Raspberry Pi OS style bash prompt:
autoload -U colors && colors
PS1="%B%F{034}%n#%m%f%b:%B%F{019}%~ %#%f%b "
Not entirely sure if autoload -U colors && colors is necessary but I did need it when I was using $fg[...] instead of %F{...}.
In my example;
%F(%f) starts(stops) foreground color - I've used 256COLOR values but you could also use hex for example, I've used normal green %F{034} but %F{#00aa00} works too
%B(%b) starts(stops) bold
%n $USERNAME
%m short machine name
%~ logged in/working directory with ~ if in home directory
%# display % if normal user or # if su
Edit: Tested on macOS Big Sur, Monterey and Ventura. Unsure of earlier zsh versions but Ventura 13.0 is zsh 5.8.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin22.0)
To get a prompt with the color depending on the last command’s exit status, you could use this:
PS1='%(?.%F{green}.%F{red})%n#%m:%~%# %f'
Just add this line to your ~/.zshrc.
The documentation lists possible placeholders.
To complement all of the above answers another convenient trick is to place the coloured prompt settings into a zsh function. There you may define local variables to alias longer commands, e.g. rc=$reset_color or define your own colour variables. Don't forget to place it into your .zshrc file and call the function you have defined:
# Coloured prompt
autoload -U colors && colors
function myprompt {
local rc=$reset_color
export PS1="%F{cyan}%n%{$rc%}#%F{green}%m%{$rc%}:%F{magenta}%~%{$rc%}%# "
}
myprompt
man zshall and search for PROMPT EXPANSION
After reading the existing answers here, several of them are conflicting. I've tried the various approaches on systems running zsh 4.2 and 5+ and found that the reason these answers are conflicting is that they do not say which version of ZSH they are targeted at. Different versions use different syntax for this and some of them require various autoloads.
So, the best bet is probably to man zshall and search for PROMPT EXPANSION to find out all the rules for your particular installation of zsh. Note in the comments, things like "I use Ubuntu 11.04 or 10.4 or OSX" Are not very meaningful as it's unclear which version of ZSH you are using. Ubuntu 11.04 does not imply a newer version of ZSH than ubuntu 10.04. There may be any number of reasons that an older version was installed. For that matter a newer version of ZSH does not imply which syntax to use without knowing which version of ZSH it is.