Bash script that reads stdin, and based on the options given to it, matches and colors the input and outputs
it to stdout. It doesn't filter anything, just adds colors. You may find it very handy when trying to find some
patterns in large dataset.
First, put it somewhere where you can execute it; somewhere in your $PATH.
Then you can try something simple:
printf "hello\nworld\n" | van-greph ll wo dOr maybe infinite rainbow? Go for it:
base64 </dev/urandom | van-greph --green 'a.*c' 'd.*f' --yellow '0.*5' --pink '6.*9'To find out all about this utility, you can run van-greph --help, and it will tell you everything:
Usage: van-greph [-z] [[OPTION]... FILTER]...
Colors text from standard input based on OPTION(s) per FILTER(s) and outputs to
standard output. Some of the options are directly mapped to the grep options.
FILTER is a pattern to match. How exactly will the FILTER be used depends on
the given OPTION(s), it may be a simple string match (-F) or a match using
regular expressions (one of -E and -G options).
Available OPTION(s):
-E, --extended-regexp Next FILTER is extended regular expression
-F, --fixed-strings Next FILTER is string
-G, --basic-regexp Next FILTER is basic regular expression
-P, --perl-regexp Next FILTER is Perl regular expression
-i, --ignore-case Next FILTER will ignore case distinctions
in pattern and data
-z, --null-data A data line ends in 0 byte, not newline
-f, --file=FILE For -f it treats next FILTER as a file from which to
read the patterns, for --file it does the same thing
but takes FILE directly (FILTER must be omitted)
-k, --keep-colors Keeps colors present in the input data. Otherwise,
the colors are reset before processing the input.
--bg, --background Next matched FILTER will have its background colored
instead of foreground as usual
--COLOR Uses COLOR as a color for next FILTER (instead of
choosing automatically).
Available COLORs are:
black cyan yellow blue red pink white green purple
-- indicates the unambiguous end of options of next FILTER
Examples:
# Color each name differently:
van-greph Jane John --black Batman \
<<<'One day, Jane met John and they saw Batman.'
# Infinite rainbow:
base64 </dev/urandom | \
van-greph --green 'a.*c' 'd.*f' --yellow '0.*5' --pink '6.*9'
Why van-greph? Because this script can paint too :)
Thanks @simpod, great name suggestion!
If you are on Mac, you will probably need to do some magic like I did in the CI to get this working, because I use some "advanced" features of bash/grep/sed, that ancient versions installed on Mac by default can't do.