Script to display all terminal colors

Question

Throughout the internet I have seen many people with scripts that prints out a bunch of stuff in all the colors defined in ~/.Xdefaults. However when I try to use these, I always get error: Bad Substitution. Does anyone have a working script that does the same thing?

It should end up looking something like this:

Answer 1

Here is my solution with Bash only:

for x in {0..8}; do 
    for i in {30..37}; do 
        for a in {40..47}; do 
            echo -ne "\e[$x;$i;$a""m\\\e[$x;$i;$a""m\e[0;37;40m "
        done
        echo
    done
done
echo ""

One-liner:

for x in {0..8}; do for i in {30..37}; do for a in {40..47}; do echo -ne "\e[$x;$i;$a""m\\\e[$x;$i;$a""m\e[0;37;40m "; done; echo; done; done; echo ""

Here's a picture in Cygwin:

Answer 2

A simple one-liner that should work for most people.

msgcat --color=test

Answer 3

You can also use the colortest package.

1. Install it with this command:

   sudo apt-get install colortest
   

2. It provides several commands which you can use, depending on how many colors you want:

   colortest-16   colortest-16b  colortest-256  colortest-8
   

Example output from colortest-16b:

Answer 4

Here's my version:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
terse = "-t" in sys.argv[1:] or "--terse" in sys.argv[1:]
write = sys.stdout.write
for i in range(2 if terse else 10):
    for j in range(30, 38):
        for k in range(40, 48):
            if terse:
                write("\33[%d;%d;%dm%d;%d;%d\33[m " % (i, j, k, i, j, k))
            else:
                write("%d;%d;%d: \33[%d;%d;%dm Hello, World! \33[m \n" %
                      (i, j, k, i, j, k,))
        write("\n")

This prints everything. If you want a nice table (that only shows style (0) and (1), normal and bold), you can use the -t or --terse argument:

The 'blink' style (5) doesn't work with gnome-terminal. ;-)

---

If this doesn't work for you, there's something else wrong. Please let us know once you've tested it.

Answer 5

i made a little script for that :)

here's the important part:

colors=$@
for (( n=0; n < $colors; n++ )) do
    printf " [%d] $(tput setaf $n)%s$(tput sgr0)" $n "wMwMwMwMwMwMw
"
done

you pass it a number n and it spits out n colored lines along with each color's ansi index (you can use it in $(tput setaf <ansi-index>)).

here's a screenshot of the (partial) output:

i also got this one, which i forked (and slightly modified) from twerth:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo -e "\033[0mNC (No color)"
echo -e "\033[1;37mWHITE\t\033[0;30mBLACK"
echo -e "\033[0;34mBLUE\t\033[1;34mLIGHT_BLUE"
echo -e "\033[0;32mGREEN\t\033[1;32mLIGHT_GREEN"
echo -e "\033[0;36mCYAN\t\033[1;36mLIGHT_CYAN"
echo -e "\033[0;31mRED\t\033[1;31mLIGHT_RED"
echo -e "\033[0;35mPURPLE\t\033[1;35mLIGHT_PURPLE"
echo -e "\033[0;33mYELLOW\t\033[1;33mLIGHT_YELLOW"
echo -e "\033[1;30mGRAY\t\033[0;37mLIGHT_GRAY"

… which, in my current theme, shows:

Answer 6

Recently wanted to find that script that many people are refering myself. It's from the tldp.org Bash Prompt HOWTO - http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x329.html. The script is authored by Daniel Crisman.

It outputs exactly the same as on the pic from the question. The script itself:

#!/bin/bash
#
#   This file echoes a bunch of color codes to the 
#   terminal to demonstrate what's available.  Each 
#   line is the color code of one forground color,
#   out of 17 (default + 16 escapes), followed by a 
#   test use of that color on all nine background 
#   colors (default + 8 escapes).
#

T='gYw'   # The test text

echo -e "\n                 40m     41m     42m     43m\
     44m     45m     46m     47m";

for FGs in '    m' '   1m' '  30m' '1;30m' '  31m' '1;31m' '  32m' \
           '1;32m' '  33m' '1;33m' '  34m' '1;34m' '  35m' '1;35m' \
           '  36m' '1;36m' '  37m' '1;37m';
  do FG=${FGs// /}
  echo -en " $FGs \033[$FG  $T  "
  for BG in 40m 41m 42m 43m 44m 45m 46m 47m;
    do echo -en "$EINS \033[$FG\033[$BG  $T  \033[0m";
  done
  echo;
done
echo

Answer 7

This is my solution. It prints all 225 colours in bash:

for colour in {1..225}
    do echo -en "\033[38;5;${colour}m38;5;${colour} \n"
done | column -x

Answer 8

This question is actually a top result when I search on how to display color codes in a terminal. So I wanted to give justice and give what the OP exactly was looking for. I do remember the screenshot is somewhat familiar. At first, I thought it was from Gogh however it's a bit different. I then realized it's exactly the same script being used in iTerm2 colors.

Lucky enough, they added a comment on where it originally came from

I'm posting the script for reference, taken from iTerm2 with original credits:

#!/bin/bash
#
#   This file echoes a bunch of color codes to the
#   terminal to demonstrate what's available.  Each
#   line is the color code of one forground color,
#   out of 17 (default + 16 escapes), followed by a
#   test use of that color on all nine background
#   colors (default + 8 escapes).
#
#   Copied from http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x329.html

T='gYw'   # The test text

echo -e "\n                 40m     41m     42m     43m\
     44m     45m     46m     47m";

for FGs in '    m' '   1m' '  30m' '1;30m' '  31m' '1;31m' '  32m' \
           '1;32m' '  33m' '1;33m' '  34m' '1;34m' '  35m' '1;35m' \
           '  36m' '1;36m' '  37m' '1;37m';
  do FG=${FGs// /}
  echo -en " $FGs \033[$FG  $T  "
  for BG in 40m 41m 42m 43m 44m 45m 46m 47m;
    do echo -en "$EINS \033[$FG\033[$BG  $T  \033[0m";
  done
  echo;
done
echo

Here's the script in action:

Answer 9

Refer https://askubuntu.com/a/396555/41013 That will print the following output with formats like BOLD ,UNDERLINE , Highlighting and colors.

Answer 10

This is a modified version of the TLDP script here. It shows standard colors and vivid colors (codes 90-97 and 100-107).

#!/bin/bash
# Show available terminal colours.
# Heavily modified version of the TLDP script here:
# http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x329.html

print_colors(){
  # Print column headers.
  printf "%-4s  " '' ${bgs[@]}
  echo
  # Print rows.
  for bold in ${bolds[@]}; do
    for fg in ${fgs[@]}; do
      # Print row header
      printf "%s;%s  " $bold $fg
      # Print cells.
      for bg in ${bgs[@]}; do
        # Print cell.
        printf "\e[%s;%s;%sm%s\e[0m  " $bold $fg $bg "text"
      done
      echo
    done
  done
}

# Print standard colors.
bolds=( 0 1 )
fgs=( 3{0..7} )
bgs=( 4{0..8} )
print_colors

# Print vivid colors.
bolds=( 0 ) # Bold vivid is the same as bold normal.
fgs=( 9{0..7} )
bgs=( 10{0..8} )
print_colors

Example output:

Answer 11

I wrote a little script that prints all the colors with number value, rgb value,hex value ,... so that I never have to look for the 256 terminal colors on the internet. You can find the link here. You can also get it from pypi:

pip3 install colo

Answer 12

Since we are talking old school, a good old ANSI C program is in order:

#include <stdio.h>

static void aput( char* c, char bg_col, char fg_col )
{  int bg, fg;
   if( bg_col > 7 ) bg = 100 + bg_col-8;
   else             bg =  40 + bg_col;
   if( fg_col > 7 ) fg =  90 + fg_col-8;
   else             fg =  30 + fg_col;
   printf( "\033[%i;%im%s\033[0;0m", fg, bg, c );
}

int main( void )
{  int bg, fg;
   
   for( fg = 0; fg <  8; fg += 1 ) aput("    ", fg, 0); putchar('\n');
   for( fg = 8; fg < 16; fg += 1 ) aput("    ", fg, 0); putchar('\n');
   putchar('\n'); 
   for( bg = 0; bg < 16; bg += 1 )
   {  for( fg = 0; fg < 16; fg += 1 )
      {   aput( "10", bg, fg );  }
      putchar('\n');
   }
}

Sample output: