List of ANSI color escape sequences

Question

On most terminals it is possible to colorize output using the  033 ANSI escape sequence   I m looking for a list of all supported colors and options  like bright and blinking    As there are probably differences between the terminals supporting them  I m mainly interested in sequences supported by xterm-compatible terminals

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How about   ECMA-48 - Control Functions for Coded Character Sets  5th edition  June 1991  -  A standard defining the color control codes  that is apparently supported also by xterm   SGR 38 and 48 were originally reserved by ECMA-48  but were fleshed out a few years later in a joint ITU  IEC  and ISO standard  which comes in several parts and which  amongst a whole lot of other things  documents the SGR 38 48 control sequences for direct colour and indexed colour    Information technology  mdash  Open Document Architecture  ODA  and interchange format  Document structures   T 412   International Telecommunication Union  Information technology  mdash  Open Document Architecture  ODA  and interchange format  Character content architectures   T 416   International Telecommunication Union  Information technology mdash  Open Document Architecture  ODA  and Interchange Format  Character content architectures   ISO IEC 8613-6 1994   International Organization for Standardization    There s a column for xterm in this table on the Wikipedia page for ANSI escape codes

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The ANSI escape sequences you re looking for are the Select Graphic Rendition subset  All of these have the form  033 XXXm  where XXX is a series of semicolon-separated parameters  To say  make text red  bold  and underlined  we ll discuss many other options below  in C you might write  printf  quot  033 31 1 4mHello 033 0m quot     In C   you d use std  cout lt  lt  quot  033 31 1 4mHello 033 0m quot    In Python3 you d use print  quot  033 31 1 4mHello 033 0m quot    and in Bash you d use echo -e  quot  033 31 1 4mHello 033 0m quot   where the first part makes the text red  31   bold  1   underlined  4  and the last part clears all this  0   As described in the table below  there are a large number of text properties you can set  such as boldness  font  underlining   amp c   Isn t it silly that StackOverflow doesn t allow you to put proper tables in answers   Font Effects     Code Effect Note     0 Reset   Normal all attributes off   1 Bold or increased intensity    2 Faint  decreased intensity  Not widely supported    3 Italic Not widely supported  Sometimes treated as inverse    4 Underline    5 Slow Blink less than 150 per minute   6 Rapid Blink MS-DOS ANSI SYS  150  per minute  not widely supported   7   reverse video   swap foreground and background colors   8 Conceal Not widely supported    9 Crossed-out Characters legible  but marked for deletion   Not widely supported    10 Primary default  font    11   19 Alternate font Select alternate font n-10   20 Fraktur hardly ever supported   21 Bold off or Double Underline Bold off not widely supported  double underline hardly ever supported    22 Normal color or intensity Neither bold nor faint   23 Not italic  not Fraktur    24 Underline off Not singly or doubly underlined   25 Blink off    27 Inverse off    28 Reveal conceal off   29 Not crossed out    30   37 Set foreground color See color table below   38 Set foreground color Next arguments are 5  lt n gt  or 2  lt r gt   lt g gt   lt b gt   see below   39 Default foreground color implementation defined  according to standard    40   47 Set background color See color table below   48 Set background color Next arguments are 5  lt n gt  or 2  lt r gt   lt g gt   lt b gt   see below   49 Default background color implementation defined  according to standard    51 Framed    52 Encircled    53 Overlined    54 Not framed or encircled    55 Not overlined    60 ideogram underline hardly ever supported   61 ideogram double underline hardly ever supported   62 ideogram overline hardly ever supported   63 ideogram double overline hardly ever supported   64 ideogram stress marking hardly ever supported   65 ideogram attributes off reset the effects of all of 60-64   90   97 Set bright foreground color aixterm  not in standard    100   107 Set bright background color aixterm  not in standard     2-bit Colours You ve got this already  4-bit Colours The standards implementing terminal colours began with limited  4-bit  options  The table below lists the RGB values of the background and foreground colours used for these by a variety of terminal emulators   Using the above  you can make red text on a green background  but why   using   033 31 42m  11 Colours  An Interlude  In their book  quot Basic Color Terms  Their Universality and Evolution quot   Brent Berlin and Paul Kay used data collected from twenty different languages from a range of language families to identify eleven possible basic color categories  white  black  red  green  yellow  blue  brown  purple  pink  orange  and gray  Berlin and Kay found that  in languages with fewer than the maximum eleven color categories  the colors followed a specific evolutionary pattern  This pattern is as follows   All languages contain terms for black  cool colours  and white  bright colours   If a language contains three terms  then it contains a term for red  If a language contains four terms  then it contains a term for either green or yellow  but not both   If a language contains five terms  then it contains terms for both green and yellow  If a language contains six terms  then it contains a term for blue  If a language contains seven terms  then it contains a term for brown  If a language contains eight or more terms  then it contains terms for purple  pink  orange or gray   This may be why story Beowulf only contains the colours black  white  and red  It may also be why the Bible does not contain the colour blue  Homer s Odyssey contains black almost 200 times and white about 100 times  Red appears 15 times  while yellow and green appear only 10 times   More information here  Differences between languages are also interesting  note the profusion of distinct colour words used by English vs  Chinese  However  digging deeper into these languages shows that each uses colour in distinct ways   More information   Generally speaking  the naming  use  and grouping of colours in human languages is fascinating  Now  back to the show  8-bit  256  colours Technology advanced  and tables of 256 pre-selected colours became available  as shown below   Using these above  you can make pink text like so   033 38 5 206m      That is   033 38 5  lt FG COLOR gt m  And make an early-morning blue background using  033 48 5 57m       That is   033 48 5  lt BG COLOR gt m  And  of course  you can combine these   033 38 5 206 48 5 57m  The 8-bit colours are arranged like so  0x00-0x07   standard colors  same as the 4-bit colours  0x08-0x0F   high intensity colors 0x10-0xE7   6    6    6 cube  216 colors   16   36    r   6    g   b  0   r  g  b   5  0xE8-0xFF   grayscale from black to white in 24 steps  ALL THE COLOURS Now we are living in the future  and the full RGB spectrum is available using   033 38 2  lt r gt   lt g gt   lt b gt m      Select RGB foreground color  033 48 2  lt r gt   lt g gt   lt b gt m      Select RGB background color  So you can put pinkish text on a brownish background using  033 38 2 255 82 197 48 2 155 106 0mHello  Support for  quot true color quot  terminals is listed here  Much of the above is drawn from the Wikipedia page  quot ANSI escape code quot   A Handy Script to Remind Yourself Since I m often in the position of trying to remember what colours are what  I have a handy script called    bin ansi colours     usr bin python  print  quot   033 XXm quot   for i in range 30 37 1       print  quot  033  dm d t t 033  dm d quot     i i i 60 i 60    print  quot  033 39m  033 39m - Reset colour quot  print  quot   033 2K - Clear Line quot  print  quot   033  lt L gt   lt C gt H OR   033  lt L gt   lt C gt f puts the cursor at line L and column C  quot  print  quot   033  lt N gt A Move the cursor up N lines quot  print  quot   033  lt N gt B Move the cursor down N lines quot  print  quot   033  lt N gt C Move the cursor forward N columns quot  print  quot   033  lt N gt D Move the cursor backward N columns quot  print  quot   033 2J Clear the screen  move to  0 0  quot  print  quot   033 K Erase to end of line quot  print  quot   033 s Save cursor position quot  print  quot   033 u Restore cursor position quot  print  quot   quot  print  quot   033 4m  Underline on quot  print  quot   033 24m Underline off quot  print  quot   033 1m  Bold on quot  print  quot   033 21m Bold off quot   This prints

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It s related absolutely to your terminal  VTE doesn t support blink  If you use gnome-terminal  tilda  guake  terminator  xfce4-terminal and so on according to VTE  you won t have blink  If you use or want to use blink on VTE  you have to use xterm   You can use infocmp command with terminal name   infocmp vt100  infocmp xterm  infocmp vte  For example     infocmp vte     Reconstructed via infocmp from file   usr share terminfo v vte vte VTE aka GNOME Terminal      am  bce  mir  msgr  xenl      colors 8  cols 80  it 8  lines 24  ncv 16  pairs 64      acsc   aaffggiijjkkllmmnnooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzz              bel  G  bold  E 1m  civis  E  25l  clear  E H E 2J      cnorm  E  25h  cr  M  csr  E  i p1 d  p2 dr      cub  E  p1 dD  cub1  H  cud  E  p1 dB  cud1  J      cuf  E  p1 dC  cuf1  E C  cup  E  i p1 d  p2 dH      cuu  E  p1 dA  cuu1  E A  dch  E  p1 dP  dch1  E P      dim  E 2m  dl  E  p1 dM  dl1  E M  ech  E  p1 dX  ed  E J      el  E K  enacs  E 0  home  E H  hpa  E  i p1 dG  ht  I      hts  EH  il  E  p1 dL  il1  E L  ind  J  invis  E 8m      is2  E m E  7h E 4l E gt  E7 E r E  1 3 4 6l E8      kDC  E 3 2   kEND  E 1 2F  kHOM  E 1 2H  kIC  E 2 2       kLFT  E 1 2D  kNXT  E 6 2   kPRV  E 5 2   kRIT  E 1 2C      kb2  E E  kbs  177  kcbt  E Z  kcub1  EOD  kcud1  EOB      kcuf1  EOC  kcuu1  EOA  kdch1  E 3   kend  EOF  kf1  EOP      kf10  E 21   kf11  E 23   kf12  E 24   kf13  E 1 2P      kf14  E 1 2Q  kf15  E 1 2R  kf16  E 1 2S  kf17  E 15 2       kf18  E 17 2   kf19  E 18 2   kf2  EOQ  kf20  E 19 2       kf21  E 20 2   kf22  E 21 2   kf23  E 23 2       kf24  E 24 2   kf25  E 1 5P  kf26  E 1 5Q  kf27  E 1 5R      kf28  E 1 5S  kf29  E 15 5   kf3  EOR  kf30  E 17 5       kf31  E 18 5   kf32  E 19 5   kf33  E 20 5       kf34  E 21 5   kf35  E 23 5   kf36  E 24 5       kf37  E 1 6P  kf38  E 1 6Q  kf39  E 1 6R  kf4  EOS      kf40  E 1 6S  kf41  E 15 6   kf42  E 17 6       kf43  E 18 6   kf44  E 19 6   kf45  E 20 6       kf46  E 21 6   kf47  E 23 6   kf48  E 24 6       kf49  E 1 3P  kf5  E 15   kf50  E 1 3Q  kf51  E 1 3R      kf52  E 1 3S  kf53  E 15 3   kf54  E 17 3       kf55  E 18 3   kf56  E 19 3   kf57  E 20 3       kf58  E 21 3   kf59  E 23 3   kf6  E 17   kf60  E 24 3       kf61  E 1 4P  kf62  E 1 4Q  kf63  E 1 4R  kf7  E 18       kf8  E 19   kf9  E 20   kfnd  E 1   khome  EOH      kich1  E 2   kind  E 1 2B  kmous  E M  knp  E 6       kpp  E 5   kri  E 1 2A  kslt  E 4   meml  El  memu  Em      op  E 39 49m  rc  E8  rev  E 7m  ri  EM  ritm  E 23m      rmacs  O  rmam  E  7l  rmcup  E 2J E  47l E8  rmir  E 4l      rmkx  E  1l E gt   rmso  E m  rmul  E m  rs1  Ec      rs2  E7 E r E8 E m E  7h E  p E  1 3 4 6l E 4l E gt  E  1000l E  25h      sc  E7  setab  E 4 p1 dm  setaf  E 3 p1 dm      sgr  E 0   p6 t 1     p2 t 4     p5 t 2     p7 t 8     p1 p3   t 7  m   p9 t 016 e 017        sgr0  E 0m 017  sitm  E 3m  smacs  N  smam  E  7h      smcup  E7 E  47h  smir  E 4h  smkx  E  1h E   smso  E 7m      smul  E 4m  tbc  E 3g  u6  E  i d  dR  u7  E 6n      u8  E     0123456789 c  u9  E c  vpa  E  i p1 dd

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For these who don t get proper results other than mentioned languages  if you re using C  to print a text into console terminal  window you should replace   033  with   x1b   In Visual Basic it would be Chrw 27

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There are some more interesting ones along with related info   http   wiki bash-hackers org scripting terminalcodes http   www termsys demon co uk vtansi htm  dead  archive org snapshot  http   invisible-island net xterm ctlseqs ctlseqs html http   www tldp org HOWTO Bash-Prompt-HOWTO c327 html https   wiki archlinux org index php Color Bash Prompt

[colors] List of ANSI color escape sequences

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