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Putnik
Asked: 2023-07-23 01:10:27 +0800 CST

How to save input colors in awk?

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I've seen many more or less related topics, but all I found discuss how to color awk output. I need to preserve the color that was provided as awk input. For example, now I have:

./some_command
(red_text) (blue_text) (green_text)

./some_command | awk -F' ' '{print $1}'
(red_text) # < but the color is standard terminal color, not red anymore

How to keep the original coloring in the awk output?

linux

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    some_command may have an option to force color even when it's connected to a terminal, for example with grep it would be --color=always. If it doesn't though you have to trick some_command into thinking it's connected to a terminal. Using script for example:

    script --return --quiet -c 'echo a b | grep --color a'   /dev/null | awk '{print $1}'

    There would be no color if you ran grep without script:

    echo a b | grep --color a  | awk '{print $1}'
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