How can I print to the console in color in a cross-platform manner?

Question

How can I output colored text using \"printf\" on both Mac OS X and Linux?

Answer 1

For the best portability, query the terminfo database. In shell,

colors=(black red green yellow blue magenta cyan white)
for ((i = 0; i < ${#colors[*]}; i++)); do
    ((j=(i+1)%${#colors[*]}))
    printf '%s%s%s on %s%s\n' "$(tput setaf $i)" "$(tput setab $j)" \
            "${colors[i]}" "${colors[j]}" "$(tput op)"
done

will print out

black on red
red on green
green on yellow
yellow on blue
blue on magenta
magenta on cyan
cyan on white
white on black

but in color.