Hello,

Just come up to my mind, I'm using openSuSE 12.1 for my mail server. In openSuSE 12.1 every grep word will come up with different colors (red).

Is there any way when I tail -f /var/log/mail every 'status=sent' word is in red color without grep only 'status=sent'? so the whole mail log are displayed but every 'status=sent' word come up with red color.

Regards,
Arfal

use:

Terminal colors are produced through the use of ansi escape codes, hidden markup characters inserted into the text that control how the terminal displays things.

grep, with the --color option, inserts color codes into the output text stream whenever it finds a match. tail, on the other hand, does not have that ability, so your only choice is to subsequently filter it through a program or script that does.

Note also that most programs that produce color output only do when the output is being sent directly to a terminal. When the output is being piped to a second program, or redirected into a file, colors are usually disabled, as the extra characters in the text are probably unwanted and can mess with subsequent operations.

But in grep, ls, and many other programs that produce color output, you can use --color=always, --color=auto, or --color=never to control when the codes are inserted (auto the default behavior).

To see an example of the codes, try running:
...and then view the file in a standard text editor. Assuming grep matched something You should see the markup characters embedded in the line, like this:

But if you cat the file back into the terminal, you'll see it turn red again.

Thanks very much all!! It works now