Color escape codes in pretty printed columns

Question

I have a tab-delimited text file which I send to column to \"pretty print\" a table.

Original file:

1blablablabla

        

Answer 1

I wrote a bash version of column (similar to the one from util-linux) which works with color codes:

#!/bin/bash
which sed >> /dev/null || exit 1

version=1.0b
editor="Norman Geist"
last="04 Jul 2016"

# NOTE: Brilliant pipeable tool to format input text into a table by 
# NOTE: an configurable seperation string, similar to column
# NOTE: from util-linux, but we are smart enough to ignore 
# NOTE: ANSI escape codes in our column width computation
# NOTE: means we handle colors properly ;-)

# BUG : none

addspace=1
seperator=$(echo -e " ")
columnW=()
columnT=()

while getopts "s:hp:v" opt; do
  case $opt in
s ) seperator=$OPTARG;;
p ) addspace=$OPTARG;;
v ) echo "Version $version last edited by $editor ($last)"; exit 0;;
h ) echo "column2 [-s seperator] [-p padding] [-v]"; exit 0;;
* ) echo "Unknow comandline switch \"$opt\""; exit 1
  esac
done
shift $(($OPTIND-1))

if [ ${#seperator} -lt 1 ]; then
  echo "Error) Please enter valid seperation string!"
  exit 1
fi

if [ ${#addspace} -lt 1 ]; then
  echo "Error) Please enter number of addional padding spaces!"
  exit 1
fi

#args: string
function trimANSI()
{
  TRIM=$1
  TRIM=$(sed 's/\x1b\[[0-9;]*m//g' <<< $TRIM); #trim color codes
  TRIM=$(sed 's/\x1b(B//g'         <<< $TRIM); #trim sgr0 directive
  echo $TRIM
}

#args: len
function pad()
{
  for ((i=0; i<$1; i++))
  do 
echo -n " "
  done
}

#read and measure cols
while read ROW
do
  while IFS=$seperator read -ra COLS; do
ITEMC=0
for ITEM in "${COLS[@]}"; do
  SITEM=$(trimANSI "$ITEM"); #quotes matter O_o
  [ ${#columnW[$ITEMC]} -gt 0 ] || columnW[$ITEMC]=0
  [ ${columnW[$ITEMC]} -lt ${#SITEM} ] && columnW[$ITEMC]=${#SITEM}
  ((ITEMC++))
done
columnT[${#columnT[@]}]="$ROW"
  done <<< "$ROW"
done

#print formatted output
for ROW in "${columnT[@]}"
do
  while IFS=$seperator read -ra COLS; do
ITEMC=0
for ITEM in "${COLS[@]}"; do
  WIDTH=$(( ${columnW[$ITEMC]} + $addspace ))
  SITEM=$(trimANSI "$ITEM"); #quotes matter O_o
  PAD=$(($WIDTH-${#SITEM}))

  if [ $ITEMC -ne 0 ]; then
    pad $PAD
  fi

  echo -n "$ITEM"

  if [ $ITEMC -eq 0 ]; then
    pad $PAD
  fi

  ((ITEMC++))
done
  done <<< "$ROW"
  echo ""
done

Example usage:

bold=$(tput bold)
normal=$(tput sgr0)
green=$(tput setaf 2)

column2 -s § << END
${bold}First Name§Last Name§City${normal}
${green}John§Wick${normal}§New York
${green}Max§Pattern${normal}§Denver
END

Output example:

Answer 2

A solution using printf to format the ouput as well :

while IFS=$'\t' read -r c1 c2 c3; do
    tput setaf 1; printf '%-10s' "$c1"
    tput setaf 2; printf '%-30s' "$c2"
    tput setaf 3; printf '%-30s' "$c3"
    tput sgr0; echo
done < file

Answer 3

In my case, I wanted to selectively colorise values in a column depending on its value. Let's say I want okokokok to be green and blabla to be red.

I can do it such way (the idea is to colorise values of columns after columnisation):

GREEN_SED='\\033[0;32m'
RED_SED='\\033[0;31m'
NC_SED='\\033[0m' # No Color

column -s$'\t' -t <original file> | echo -e "$(sed -e "s/okokokok/${GREEN_SED}okokokok${NC_SED}/g" -e "s/blabla/${RED_SED}blabla${NC_SED}/g")"

Alternatively, with a variable:

DATA=$(column -s$'\t' -t <original file>)

GREEN_SED='\\033[0;32m'
RED_SED='\\033[0;31m'
NC_SED='\\033[0m' # No Color
echo -e "$(sed -e "s/okokokok/${GREEN_SED}okokokok${NC_SED}/g" -e "s/blabla/${RED_SED}blabla${NC_SED}/g" <<< "$DATA")"

Take a note of that additional backslash in values of color definitions. It is made for sed to not interpret an origingal backsash.

This is a result:

Answer 4

I would use awk for the colorization (sed can be used as well):

awk '{printf "\033[1;32m%s\t\033[00m\033[1;33m%s\t\033[00m\033[1;34m%s\033[00m\n", $1, $2, $3;}' a.txt 

and pipe it to column for the alignment:

... | column -s$'\t' -t

Output: