Color Linux command output

Question

For example, I\'d like to color the output of the locate command so it\'s easily distinguished from the other terminal text.

It should work something li

Answer 1

I think the hl command available on git hub might help you :
have a look at http://www.flashnux.com/notes/page_000022_US.html

Answer 2

As suggested by Jonathan Leffler, comment posted as an anwser:

grep --color will provide colour

Answer 3

I prefer use highlight utility:

highlight -O xterm256 -S sh

-S sh here means treats the input as shell script syntax.

More info: http://www.andre-simon.de/

I set it as an alias through ~/.bashrc:

Answer 4

There is a far better way to achieve customizable coloring:

colorit

You can use it as shown in other answers via some_command | colorit but it is nicely configurable over the .coloritrc. In mine I have stuff like

dnl  Define some useful color variables
define(`red', `1')
define(`green', `2')
define(`magenta', `5')
dnl
dnl  Mark macro arguments: regexp foreground-color [background-color]
dnl
define(`mark', ``mark "$1"'' `ifelse(`$#', `3', ``"\033[3$2;4$3m"'',
``"\033[3$2m"'')' `"\033[m"')
dnl
divert
mark(`warning', magenta)
mark(`Warning', magenta)
mark(`Traceback', magenta)
mark(`Error', red)
mark(`FAIL', red)
mark(`ERROR', red)
mark(`XFAIL', green)
mark(`ok', green)
mark(`OK', green)
mark(`PASS', green)

and use it all the time for coloring compiler output and similar stuff. See my .coloritrc for more.