Snow Leopard and Bash Colors

August 31, 2009

One little problem people—including myself—have been running into is bash color codes. Many .bashrc files have the following (or similar):

export COLOR_NC='\e[0m' # No Color
export COLOR_WHITE='\e[1;37m'
export COLOR_BLACK='\e[0;30m'
export COLOR_BLUE='\e[0;34m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_BLUE='\e[1;34m'
export COLOR_GREEN='\e[0;32m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GREEN='\e[1;32m'
export COLOR_CYAN='\e[0;36m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_CYAN='\e[1;36m'
export COLOR_RED='\e[0;31m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_RED='\e[1;31m'
export COLOR_PURPLE='\e[0;35m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_PURPLE='\e[1;35m'
export COLOR_BROWN='\e[0;33m'
export COLOR_YELLOW='\e[1;33m'
export COLOR_GRAY='\e[1;30m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GRAY='\e[0;37m'

The solution is to use \033 as the escape code rather than \e.

# Setup some colors to use later in interactive shell or scripts
export COLOR_NC='\033[0m' # No Color
export COLOR_WHITE='\033[1;37m'
export COLOR_BLACK='\033[0;30m'
export COLOR_BLUE='\033[0;34m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_BLUE='\033[1;34m'
export COLOR_GREEN='\033[0;32m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GREEN='\033[1;32m'
export COLOR_CYAN='\033[0;36m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_CYAN='\033[1;36m'
export COLOR_RED='\033[0;31m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_RED='\033[1;31m'
export COLOR_PURPLE='\033[0;35m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_PURPLE='\033[1;35m'
export COLOR_BROWN='\033[0;33m'
export COLOR_YELLOW='\033[1;33m'
export COLOR_GRAY='\033[1;30m'
export COLOR_LIGHT_GRAY='\033[0;37m'