How do I get colored output to a file from a bash script running in crontab?

Question

When I run a bash script manually, the output appends my log file in the color specified using tput. When I run the bash script as a cronjob, the output loses the color. Thanks.

Answer 1

Your cron environment almost certainly is just not specifying a terminal type that supports colors and so tput is not returning anything.

Compare:

$ echo $TERM
xterm-256color
$ printf %q\\n "$(tput setaf 5)"
$'\E[35m'
$ printf %q\\n "$(TERM=dumb tput setaf 5)"
''

Answer 2

I put TERM=xterm export TERM in the bash_profile file and the colors are working.