Terminal escape sequences

Table of Contents

• Intro
• Description
  • Syntax
  • Commands
    • Hex values
  • Examples

Intro

ANSI terminal escape sequences are pretty cool. They allow you to color text and do all sorts of cool stuff.

Well, Terminal has support for a version of ansi escapes that is based off of ANSI that gives a little more customization.

Description

Syntax

The syntax emulates ANSI: <ESC>[<command><arg>;

Where <ESC> is the escape char 0x1b, <command> is a single digit command, and <arg> is the argument(s).

Not all commands have arguments.

Commands

Commands are single letters and always come right after the bracket [.

Command	Parameters	Description
b	24-bit (RGB) Hex color value	Sets the background color for all following text
f	24-bit (RGB) Hex color value	Sets the foreground color for all following text
B	None	Reverts the background color to the default
F	None	Reverts the foreground color to the default
r	None	Sets all styles to their default

Note

Parameters can optionally be terminated early by appending a semicolon ;. This can be necessary if you want to, say, use RGB values like 0x0000ff but don't want to have the trailing zeros, so you instead do <ESC>[bff;. the ff will be interpreted as 0x0000ff (blue). You can even go further, and do [f;, omitting parameters entirely, causing the background to be set to black.

Hex values

Hexidecimal values can be taken as parameters for some commands. The way they're represented is extreamly straightforward:

0x432ff3 -> 432ff3
0x123456 -> 123456

As you can see, you just strip the decoration (in this case the 0x, other times may be #).

Examples

<ESC>[ff0b105 - sets foreground color to a nice orange
<ESC>[fff2f00 - sets background color to a harsh red
<ESC>[fff; - sets background color to blue. same as <ESC>[f0000ff