color support for less or most

leftty · 08-25-2008, 10:28 PM

Hello. Does anyone know how to keep colored text when viewing files through less or most? Thanks.

Mr. C. · 08-25-2008, 10:41 PM

The terminal emulator must support, and be set for, color.

What terminal type are you using ?

echo $TERM

leftty · 08-26-2008, 10:22 AM

echo $TERM
linux

I did say "keep" color, which implies that my bash terminal uses color except with the less program.

Mr. C. · 08-26-2008, 11:47 AM

I see. There is no shortage of poorly worded questions in the forums, and it is not always easy to pull the relavant facts from sloppy language.

Less and more do not have syntax highlighting, so the best color you will get with them is two color (foreground/background) plus any standard attributes such as bold, underline, blink, etc.

matthewg42 · 08-26-2008, 02:18 PM

Try the -R option to less.

arizonagroovejet · 08-26-2008, 02:22 PM

Depending on exactly what you want to do you may find the -r option on less useful. Try these commands

Code:

$ (echo -e "\E[1;34m";ls) | less
$ (echo -e "\E[1;34m";ls) | less -r

and note how in the first one the first line of what less displays is "ESC[1;34m" but in the second command that line is missing and all the text is blue. I used this recently where I wanted to have some coloured output in something that would be displayed by less. E.g. this is a very crude and convoluted example of colouring the output of ls when it's display with less

Code:

$ foo=`for i in *;do if  test -d "$i";then echo  "\E[1;34m" ;fi; ls -lhd  "$i";echo  "\E[0m\n"; done` && echo -e $foo | less -r

leftty · 08-29-2008, 02:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. C.

I see. There is no shortage of poorly worded questions in the forums, and it is not always easy to pull the relavant facts from sloppy language.

"Relevant" is misspelled. And thanks to arizonagroovejet.

Mr. C. · 08-29-2008, 03:22 AM

And so is leftty. Find more interesting things to say.

FcoJavier99 · 10-24-2014, 02:02 PM

-r option for less.
and --color=always option for the other one.