Term::ANSIColor(3) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Term::ANSIColor(3)
NAME
Term::ANSIColor - Color screen output using ANSI escape sequences
SYNOPSIS
use Term::ANSIColor;
print color('bold blue');
print "This text is bold blue.\n";
print color('reset');
print "This text is normal.\n";
print colored("Yellow on magenta.", 'yellow on_magenta'), "\n";
print "This text is normal.\n";
print colored(['yellow on_magenta'], 'Yellow on magenta.', "\n");
print colored(['red on_bright_yellow'], 'Red on bright yellow.', "\n");
print colored(['bright_red on_black'], 'Bright red on black.', "\n");
print "\n";
# Map escape sequences back to color names.
use Term::ANSIColor 1.04 qw(uncolor);
my @names = uncolor('01;31');
print join(q{ }, @names), "\n";
# Strip all color escape sequences.
use Term::ANSIColor 2.01 qw(colorstrip);
print colorstrip("\e[1mThis is bold\e[0m"), "\n";
# Determine whether a color is valid.
use Term::ANSIColor 2.02 qw(colorvalid);
my $valid = colorvalid('blue bold', 'on_magenta');
print "Color string is ", $valid ? "valid\n" : "invalid\n";
# Create new aliases for colors.
use Term::ANSIColor 4.00 qw(coloralias);
coloralias('alert', 'red');
print "Alert is ", coloralias('alert'), "\n";
print colored("This is in red.", 'alert'), "\n";
use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants);
print BOLD, BLUE, "This text is in bold blue.\n", RESET;
use Term::ANSIColor qw(:constants);
{
local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET = 1;
print BOLD BLUE "This text is in bold blue.\n";
print "This text is normal.\n";
}
use Term::ANSIColor 2.00 qw(:pushpop);
print PUSHCOLOR RED ON_GREEN "This text is red on green.\n";
print PUSHCOLOR BRIGHT_BLUE "This text is bright blue on green.\n";
print RESET BRIGHT_BLUE "This text is just bright blue.\n";
print POPCOLOR "Back to red on green.\n";
print LOCALCOLOR GREEN ON_BLUE "This text is green on blue.\n";
print "This text is red on green.\n";
{
local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL = 1;
print ON_BLUE "This text is red on blue.\n";
print "This text is red on green.\n";
}
print POPCOLOR "Back to whatever we started as.\n";
DESCRIPTION
This module has two interfaces, one through color() and colored() and the
other through constants. It also offers the utility functions uncolor(),
colorstrip(), colorvalid(), and coloralias(), which have to be explicitly
imported to be used (see "SYNOPSIS").
If you are using Term::ANSIColor in a console command, consider supporting
the CLICOLOR standard. See "Supporting CLICOLOR" for more information.
See "COMPATIBILITY" for the versions of Term::ANSIColor that introduced
particular features and the versions of Perl that included them.
Supported Colors
Terminal emulators that support color divide into four types: ones that
support only eight colors, ones that support sixteen, ones that support
256, and ones that support 24-bit color. This module provides the ANSI es-
cape codes for all of them. These colors are referred to as ANSI colors 0
through 7 (normal), 8 through 15 (16-color), 16 through 255 (256-color),
and true color (called direct-color by xterm).
Unfortunately, interpretation of colors 0 through 7 often depends on
whether the emulator supports eight colors or sixteen colors. Emulators
that only support eight colors (such as the Linux console) will display
colors 0 through 7 with normal brightness and ignore colors 8 through 15,
treating them the same as white. Emulators that support 16 colors, such as
gnome-terminal, normally display colors 0 through 7 as dim or darker ver-
sions and colors 8 through 15 as normal brightness. On such emulators, the
"normal" white (color 7) usually is shown as pale grey, requiring bright
white (15) to be used to get a real white color. Bright black usually is a
dark grey color, although some terminals display it as pure black. Some
sixteen-color terminal emulators also treat normal yellow (color 3) as or-
ange or brown, and bright yellow (color 11) as yellow.
Following the normal convention of sixteen-color emulators, this module
provides a pair of attributes for each color. For every normal color (0
through 7), the corresponding bright color (8 through 15) is obtained by
prepending the string "bright_" to the normal color name. For example,
"red" is color 1 and "bright_red" is color 9. The same applies for back-
ground colors: "on_red" is the normal color and "on_bright_red" is the
bright color. Capitalize these strings for the constant interface.
There is unfortunately no way to know whether the current emulator supports
more than eight colors, which makes the choice of colors difficult. The
most conservative choice is to use only the regular colors, which are at
least displayed on all emulators. However, they will appear dark in six-
teen-color terminal emulators, including most common emulators in UNIX X
environments. If you know the display is one of those emulators, you may
wish to use the bright variants instead. Even better, offer the user a way
to configure the colors for a given application to fit their terminal emu-
lator.
For 256-color emulators, this module additionally provides "ansi0" through
"ansi15", which are the same as colors 0 through 15 in sixteen-color emula-
tors but use the 256-color escape syntax, "grey0" through "grey23" ranging
from nearly black to nearly white, and a set of RGB colors. The RGB colors
are of the form "rgbRGB" where R, G, and B are numbers from 0 to 5 giving
the intensity of red, green, and blue. The grey and RGB colors are also
available as "ansi16" through "ansi255" if you want simple names for all
256 colors. "on_" variants of all of these colors are also provided.
These colors may be ignored completely on non-256-color terminals or may be
misinterpreted and produce random behavior. Additional attributes such as
blink, italic, or bold may not work with the 256-color palette.
For true color emulators, this module supports attributes of the form
"rNNNgNNNbNNN" and "on_rNNNgNNNbNNN" for all values of NNN between 0 and
255. These represent foreground and background colors, respectively, with
the RGB values given by the NNN numbers. These colors may be ignored com-
pletely on non-true-color terminals or may be misinterpreted and produce
random behavior.
Function Interface
The function interface uses attribute strings to describe the colors and
text attributes to assign to text. The recognized non-color attributes are
clear, reset, bold, dark, faint, italic, underline, underscore, blink, re-
verse, and concealed. Clear and reset (reset to default attributes), dark
and faint (dim and saturated), and underline and underscore are equivalent,
so use whichever is the most intuitive to you.
Note that not all attributes are supported by all terminal types, and some
terminals may not support any of these sequences. Dark and faint, italic,
blink, and concealed in particular are frequently not implemented.
The recognized normal foreground color attributes (colors 0 to 7) are:
black red green yellow blue magenta cyan white
The corresponding bright foreground color attributes (colors 8 to 15) are:
bright_black bright_red bright_green bright_yellow
bright_blue bright_magenta bright_cyan bright_white
The recognized normal background color attributes (colors 0 to 7) are:
on_black on_red on_green on yellow
on_blue on_magenta on_cyan on_white
The recognized bright background color attributes (colors 8 to 15) are:
on_bright_black on_bright_red on_bright_green on_bright_yellow
on_bright_blue on_bright_magenta on_bright_cyan on_bright_white
For 256-color terminals, the recognized foreground colors are:
ansi0 .. ansi255
grey0 .. grey23
plus "rgbRGB" for R, G, and B values from 0 to 5, such as "rgb000" or
"rgb515". Similarly, the recognized background colors are:
on_ansi0 .. on_ansi255
on_grey0 .. on_grey23
plus "on_rgbRGB" for R, G, and B values from 0 to 5.
For true color terminals, the recognized foreground colors are "rRRRgGGG-
bBBB" for RRR, GGG, and BBB values between 0 and 255. Similarly, the rec-
ognized background colors are "on_rRRRgGGGbBBB" for RRR, GGG, and BBB val-
ues between 0 and 255.
For any of the above listed attributes, case is not significant.
Attributes, once set, last until they are unset (by printing the attribute
"clear" or "reset"). Be careful to do this, or otherwise your attribute
will last after your script is done running, and people get very annoyed at
having their prompt and typing changed to weird colors.
color(ATTR[, ATTR ...])
color() takes any number of strings as arguments and considers them to
be space-separated lists of attributes. It then forms and returns the
escape sequence to set those attributes. It doesn't print it out, just
returns it, so you'll have to print it yourself if you want to. This
is so that you can save it as a string, pass it to something else, send
it to a file handle, or do anything else with it that you might care
to. color() throws an exception if given an invalid attribute.
colored(STRING, ATTR[, ATTR ...])
colored(ATTR-REF, STRING[, STRING...])
As an aid in resetting colors, colored() takes a scalar as the first
argument and any number of attribute strings as the second argument and
returns the scalar wrapped in escape codes so that the attributes will
be set as requested before the string and reset to normal after the
string. Alternately, you can pass a reference to an array as the first
argument, and then the contents of that array will be taken as attrib-
utes and color codes and the remainder of the arguments as text to col-
orize.
Normally, colored() just puts attribute codes at the beginning and end
of the string, but if you set $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE to some
string, that string will be considered the line delimiter and the at-
tribute will be set at the beginning of each line of the passed string
and reset at the end of each line. This is often desirable if the out-
put contains newlines and you're using background colors, since a back-
ground color that persists across a newline is often interpreted by the
terminal as providing the default background color for the next line.
Programs like pagers can also be confused by attributes that span
lines. Normally you'll want to set $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE to "\n"
to use this feature.
Particularly consider setting $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE if you are in-
terleaving output to standard output and standard error and you aren't
flushing standard output (via autoflush() or setting $|). If you
don't, the code to reset the color may unexpectedly sit in the standard
output buffer rather than going to the display, causing standard error
output to appear in the wrong color.
uncolor(ESCAPE)
uncolor() performs the opposite translation as color(), turning escape
sequences into a list of strings corresponding to the attributes being
set by those sequences. uncolor() will never return "ansi16" through
"ansi255", instead preferring the "grey" and "rgb" names (and likewise
for "on_ansi16" through "on_ansi255").
colorstrip(STRING[, STRING ...])
colorstrip() removes all color escape sequences from the provided
strings, returning the modified strings separately in array context or
joined together in scalar context. Its arguments are not modified.
colorvalid(ATTR[, ATTR ...])
colorvalid() takes attribute strings the same as color() and returns
true if all attributes are known and false otherwise.
coloralias(ALIAS[, ATTR ...])
If ATTR is specified, it is interpreted as a list of space-separated
strings naming attributes or existing aliases. In this case, col-
oralias() sets up an alias of ALIAS for the set of attributes given by
ATTR. From that point forward, ALIAS can be passed into color(), col-
ored(), and colorvalid() and will have the same meaning as the sequence
of attributes given in ATTR. One possible use of this facility is to
give more meaningful names to the 256-color RGB colors. Only ASCII al-
phanumerics, ".", "_", and "-" are allowed in alias names.
If ATTR includes aliases, those aliases will be expanded at definition
time and their values will be used to define the new alias. This means
that if you define an alias A in terms of another alias B, and then
later redefine alias B, the value of alias A will not change.
If ATTR is not specified, coloralias() returns the standard attribute
or attributes to which ALIAS is aliased, if any, or undef if ALIAS does
not exist. If it is aliased to multiple attributes, the return value
will be a single string and the attributes will be separated by spaces.
This is the same facility used by the ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES environment
variable (see "ENVIRONMENT" below) but can be used at runtime, not just
when the module is loaded.
Later invocations of coloralias() with the same ALIAS will override
earlier aliases. There is no way to remove an alias.
Aliases have no effect on the return value of uncolor().
WARNING: Aliases are global and affect all callers in the same process.
There is no way to set an alias limited to a particular block of code
or a particular object.
Constant Interface
Alternately, if you import ":constants", you can use the following con-
stants directly:
CLEAR RESET BOLD DARK
FAINT ITALIC UNDERLINE UNDERSCORE
BLINK REVERSE CONCEALED
BLACK RED GREEN YELLOW
BLUE MAGENTA CYAN WHITE
BRIGHT_BLACK BRIGHT_RED BRIGHT_GREEN BRIGHT_YELLOW
BRIGHT_BLUE BRIGHT_MAGENTA BRIGHT_CYAN BRIGHT_WHITE
ON_BLACK ON_RED ON_GREEN ON_YELLOW
ON_BLUE ON_MAGENTA ON_CYAN ON_WHITE
ON_BRIGHT_BLACK ON_BRIGHT_RED ON_BRIGHT_GREEN ON_BRIGHT_YELLOW
ON_BRIGHT_BLUE ON_BRIGHT_MAGENTA ON_BRIGHT_CYAN ON_BRIGHT_WHITE
These are the same as color('attribute') and can be used if you prefer typ-
ing:
print BOLD BLUE ON_WHITE "Text", RESET, "\n";
to
print colored ("Text", 'bold blue on_white'), "\n";
(Note that the newline is kept separate to avoid confusing the terminal as
described above since a background color is being used.)
If you import ":constants256", you can use the following constants di-
rectly:
ANSI0 .. ANSI255
GREY0 .. GREY23
RGBXYZ (for X, Y, and Z values from 0 to 5, like RGB000 or RGB515)
ON_ANSI0 .. ON_ANSI255
ON_GREY0 .. ON_GREY23
ON_RGBXYZ (for X, Y, and Z values from 0 to 5)
Note that ":constants256" does not include the other constants, so if you
want to mix both, you need to include ":constants" as well. You may want
to explicitly import at least "RESET", as in:
use Term::ANSIColor 4.00 qw(RESET :constants256);
True color and aliases are not supported by the constant interface.
When using the constants, if you don't want to have to remember to add the
", RESET" at the end of each print line, you can set $Term::ANSIColor::AU-
TORESET to a true value. Then, the display mode will automatically be re-
set if there is no comma after the constant. In other words, with that
variable set:
print BOLD BLUE "Text\n";
will reset the display mode afterward, whereas:
print BOLD, BLUE, "Text\n";
will not. If you are using background colors, you will probably want to
either use say() (in newer versions of Perl) or print the newline with a
separate print statement to avoid confusing the terminal.
If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set (see below), it takes precedence over
$Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET, and the latter is ignored.
The subroutine interface has the advantage over the constants interface in
that only two subroutines are exported into your namespace, versus
thirty-eight in the constants interface, and aliases and true color attrib-
utes are supported. On the flip side, the constants interface has the ad-
vantage of better compile time error checking, since misspelled names of
colors or attributes in calls to color() and colored() won't be caught un-
til runtime whereas misspelled names of constants will be caught at compile
time. So, pollute your namespace with almost two dozen subroutines that
you may not even use that often, or risk a silly bug by mistyping an at-
tribute. Your choice, TMTOWTDI after all.
The Color Stack
You can import ":pushpop" and maintain a stack of colors using PUSHCOLOR,
POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR. PUSHCOLOR takes the attribute string that starts
its argument and pushes it onto a stack of attributes. POPCOLOR removes
the top of the stack and restores the previous attributes set by the argu-
ment of a prior PUSHCOLOR. LOCALCOLOR surrounds its argument in a PUSH-
COLOR and POPCOLOR so that the color resets afterward.
If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set, each sequence of color constants
will be implicitly preceded by LOCALCOLOR. In other words, the following:
{
local $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL = 1;
print BLUE "Text\n";
}
is equivalent to:
print LOCALCOLOR BLUE "Text\n";
If $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL is set, it takes precedence over $Term::AN-
SIColor::AUTORESET, and the latter is ignored.
When using PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR, it's particularly important
to not put commas between the constants.
print PUSHCOLOR BLUE "Text\n";
will correctly push BLUE onto the top of the stack.
print PUSHCOLOR, BLUE, "Text\n"; # wrong!
will not, and a subsequent pop won't restore the correct attributes. PUSH-
COLOR pushes the attributes set by its argument, which is normally a string
of color constants. It can't ask the terminal what the current attributes
are.
Supporting CLICOLOR
proposes a standard for enabling and dis-
abling color output from console commands using two environment variables,
CLICOLOR and CLICOLOR_FORCE. Term::ANSIColor cannot automatically support
this standard, since the correct action depends on where the output is go-
ing and Term::ANSIColor may be used in a context where colors should always
be generated even if CLICOLOR is set in the environment. But you can use
the supported environment variable ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED to implement CLI-
COLOR in your own programs with code like this:
if (exists($ENV{CLICOLOR}) && $ENV{CLICOLOR} == 0) {
if (!$ENV{CLICOLOR_FORCE}) {
$ENV{ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED} = 1;
}
}
If you are using the constant interface, be sure to include this code be-
fore you use any color constants (such as at the very top of your script),
since this environment variable is only honored the first time a color con-
stant is seen.
Be aware that this will export ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED to any child processes
of your program as well.
DIAGNOSTICS
Bad color mapping %s
(W) The specified color mapping from ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES is not valid
and could not be parsed. It was ignored.
Bad escape sequence %s
(F) You passed an invalid ANSI escape sequence to uncolor().
Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
(F) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as:
$Foobar = FOOBAR . "This line should be blue\n";
or:
@Foobar = FOOBAR, "This line should be blue\n";
This will only show up under use strict (another good reason to run un-
der use strict).
Cannot alias standard color %s
(F) The alias name passed to coloralias() matches a standard color
name. Standard color names cannot be aliased.
Cannot alias standard color %s in %s
(W) The same, but in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color mapping was ig-
nored.
Invalid alias name %s
(F) You passed an invalid alias name to coloralias(). Alias names must
consist only of alphanumerics, ".", "-", and "_".
Invalid alias name %s in %s
(W) You specified an invalid alias name on the left hand of the equal
sign in a color mapping in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color mapping was
ignored.
Invalid attribute name %s
(F) You passed an invalid attribute name to color(), colored(), or col-
oralias().
Invalid attribute name %s in %s
(W) You specified an invalid attribute name on the right hand of the
equal sign in a color mapping in ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES. The color map-
ping was ignored.
Name "%s" used only once: possible typo
(W) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as:
print FOOBAR "This text is color FOOBAR\n";
It's probably better to always use commas after constant names in order
to force the next error.
No comma allowed after filehandle
(F) You probably mistyped a constant color name such as:
print FOOBAR, "This text is color FOOBAR\n";
Generating this fatal compile error is one of the main advantages of
using the constants interface, since you'll immediately know if you
mistype a color name.
No name for escape sequence %s
(F) The ANSI escape sequence passed to uncolor() contains escapes which
aren't recognized and can't be translated to names.
ENVIRONMENT
ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES
This environment variable allows the user to specify custom color
aliases that will be understood by color(), colored(), and color-
valid(). None of the other functions will be affected, and no new
color constants will be created. The custom colors are aliases for ex-
isting color names; no new escape sequences can be introduced. Only
alphanumerics, ".", "_", and "-" are allowed in alias names.
The format is:
ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES='newcolor1=oldcolor1,newcolor2=oldcolor2'
Whitespace is ignored. The alias value can be a single attribute or a
space-separated list of attributes.
For example the Solarized col-
ors can be mapped with:
ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES='\
base00=bright_yellow, on_base00=on_bright_yellow,\
base01=bright_green, on_base01=on_bright_green, \
base02=black, on_base02=on_black, \
base03=bright_black, on_base03=on_bright_black, \
base0=bright_blue, on_base0=on_bright_blue, \
base1=bright_cyan, on_base1=on_bright_cyan, \
base2=white, on_base2=on_white, \
base3=bright_white, on_base3=on_bright_white, \
orange=bright_red, on_orange=on_bright_red, \
violet=bright_magenta,on_violet=on_bright_magenta'
This environment variable is read and applied when the Term::ANSIColor
module is loaded and is then subsequently ignored. Changes to
ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES after the module is loaded will have no effect.
See coloralias() for an equivalent facility that can be used at run-
time.
ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED
If this environment variable is set to a true value, all of the func-
tions defined by this module (color(), colored(), and all of the con-
stants) will not output any escape sequences and instead will just re-
turn the empty string or pass through the original text as appropriate.
This is intended to support easy use of scripts using this module on
platforms that don't support ANSI escape sequences.
NO_COLOR
If this environment variable is set to any value, it suppresses genera-
tion of escape sequences the same as if ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED is set to
a true value. This implements the informal
standard. Programs that want to enable color despite NO_COLOR being
set will need to unset that environment variable before any constant or
function provided by this module is used.
COMPATIBILITY
Term::ANSIColor was first included with Perl in Perl 5.6.0.
The uncolor() function and support for ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED were added in
Term::ANSIColor 1.04, included in Perl 5.8.0.
Support for dark was added in Term::ANSIColor 1.08, included in Perl 5.8.4.
The color stack, including the ":pushpop" import tag, PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR,
LOCALCOLOR, and the $Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL variable, was added in
Term::ANSIColor 2.00, included in Perl 5.10.1.
colorstrip() was added in Term::ANSIColor 2.01 and colorvalid() was added
in Term::ANSIColor 2.02, both included in Perl 5.11.0.
Support for colors 8 through 15 (the "bright_" variants) was added in
Term::ANSIColor 3.00, included in Perl 5.13.3.
Support for italic was added in Term::ANSIColor 3.02, included in Perl
5.17.1.
Support for colors 16 through 256 (the "ansi", "rgb", and "grey" colors),
the ":constants256" import tag, the coloralias() function, and support for
the ANSI_COLORS_ALIASES environment variable were added in Term::ANSIColor
4.00, included in Perl 5.17.8.
$Term::ANSIColor::AUTOLOCAL was changed to take precedence over $Term::AN-
SIColor::AUTORESET, rather than the other way around, in Term::ANSIColor
4.00, included in Perl 5.17.8.
"ansi16" through "ansi255", as aliases for the "rgb" and "grey" colors, and
the corresponding "on_ansi" names and "ANSI" and "ON_ANSI" constants were
added in Term::ANSIColor 4.06, included in Perl 5.25.7.
Support for true color (the "rNNNgNNNbNNN" and "on_rNNNgNNNbNNN" attrib-
utes), defining aliases in terms of other aliases, and aliases mapping to
multiple attributes instead of only a single attribute was added in
Term::ANSIColor 5.00.
Support for NO_COLOR was added in Term::ANSIColor 5.01.
RESTRICTIONS
Both colored() and many uses of the color constants will add the reset es-
cape sequence after a newline. If a program mixes colored output to stan-
dard output with output to standard error, this can result in the standard
error text having the wrong color because the reset escape sequence hasn't
yet been flushed to the display (since standard output to a terminal is
line-buffered by default). To avoid this, either set autoflush() on STDOUT
or set $Term::ANSIColor::EACHLINE to "\n".
It would be nice if one could leave off the commas around the constants en-
tirely and just say:
print BOLD BLUE ON_WHITE "Text\n" RESET;
but the syntax of Perl doesn't allow this. You need a comma after the
string. (Of course, you may consider it a bug that commas between all the
constants aren't required, in which case you may feel free to insert commas
unless you're using $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET or PUSHCOLOR/POPCOLOR.)
For easier debugging, you may prefer to always use the commas when not set-
ting $Term::ANSIColor::AUTORESET or PUSHCOLOR/POPCOLOR so that you'll get a
fatal compile error rather than a warning.
It's not possible to use this module to embed formatting and color attrib-
utes using Perl formats. They replace the escape character with a space
(as documented in perlform(1)), resulting in garbled output from the unrec-
ognized attribute. Even if there were a way around that problem, the for-
mat doesn't know that the non-printing escape sequence is zero-length and
would incorrectly format the output. For formatted output using color or
other attributes, either use sprintf() instead or use formline() and then
add the color or other attributes after formatting and before output.
NOTES
The codes generated by this module are standard terminal control codes,
complying with ECMA-048 and ISO 6429 (generally referred to as "ANSI color"
for the color codes). The non-color control codes (bold, dark, italic, un-
derline, and reverse) are part of the earlier ANSI X3.64 standard for con-
trol sequences for video terminals and peripherals.
Note that not all displays are ISO 6429-compliant, or even X3.64-compliant
(or are even attempting to be so). This module will not work as expected
on displays that do not honor these escape sequences, such as cmd.exe,
4nt.exe, and command.com under either Windows NT or Windows 2000. They may
just be ignored, or they may display as an ESC character followed by some
apparent garbage.
Jean Delvare provided the following table of different common terminal emu-
lators and their support for the various attributes and others have helped
me flesh it out:
clear bold faint under blink reverse conceal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
xterm yes yes no yes yes yes yes
linux yes yes yes bold yes yes no
rxvt yes yes no yes bold/black yes no
dtterm yes yes yes yes reverse yes yes
teraterm yes reverse no yes rev/red yes no
aixterm kinda normal no yes no yes yes
PuTTY yes color no yes no yes no
Windows yes no no no no yes no
Cygwin SSH yes yes no color color color yes
Terminal.app yes yes no yes yes yes yes
Windows is Windows telnet, Cygwin SSH is the OpenSSH implementation under
Cygwin on Windows NT, and Mac Terminal is the Terminal application in Mac
OS X. Where the entry is other than yes or no, that emulator displays the
given attribute as something else instead. Note that on an aixterm, clear
doesn't reset colors; you have to explicitly set the colors back to what
you want. More entries in this table are welcome.
Support for code 3 (italic) is rare and therefore not mentioned in that ta-
ble. It is not believed to be fully supported by any of the terminals
listed, although it's displayed as green in the Linux console, but it is
reportedly supported by urxvt.
Note that codes 6 (rapid blink) and 9 (strike-through) are specified in
ANSI X3.64 and ECMA-048 but are not commonly supported by most displays and
emulators and therefore aren't supported by this module. ECMA-048 also
specifies a large number of other attributes, including a sequence of at-
tributes for font changes, Fraktur characters, double-underlining, framing,
circling, and overlining. As none of these attributes are widely supported
or useful, they also aren't currently supported by this module.
Most modern X terminal emulators support 256 colors. Known to not support
those colors are aterm, rxvt, Terminal.app, and TTY/VC.
For information on true color support in various terminal emulators, see
True Colour support .
AUTHORS
Original idea (using constants) by Zenin, reimplemented using subs by Russ
Allbery , and then combined with the original idea by Russ
with input from Zenin. 256-color support is based on work by Kurt
Starsinic. Russ Allbery now maintains this module.
PUSHCOLOR, POPCOLOR, and LOCALCOLOR were contributed by openmethods.com
voice solutions.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 1996-1998, 2000-2002, 2005-2006, 2008-2018, 2020 Russ Allbery
Copyright 1996 Zenin
Copyright 2012 Kurt Starsinic
This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it un-
der the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
The CPAN module Term::ExtendedColor provides a different and more compre-
hensive interface for 256-color emulators that may be more convenient. The
CPAN module Win32::Console::ANSI provides ANSI color (and other escape se-
quence) support in the Win32 Console environment. The CPAN module
Term::Chrome provides a different interface using objects and operator
overloading.
ECMA-048 is available on-line (at least at the time of this writing) at
.
ISO 6429 is available from ISO for a charge; the author of this module does
not own a copy of it. Since the source material for ISO 6429 was ECMA-048
and the latter is available for free, there seems little reason to obtain
the ISO standard.
The 256-color control sequences are documented at (search for 256-color).
Information about true color support in various terminal emulators and test
programs you can run to check the true color support in your terminal emu-
lator are available at .
CLICOLORS and NO_COLOR are useful standards to be aware of, and ideally follow, for
any application using color. Term::ANSIColor complies with the latter.
The current version of this module is always available from its web site at
. It is also part of the
Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
perl v5.44.0 2026-05-14 Term::ANSIColor(3)