Colors library colorizes unconditionally

[wolfgang42]

Right now, the colors library is just some functions that wrap their arguments in ANSI escape codes. Unfortunately, this means that it always outputs escape codes, even when situations where this is unsuitable, such as when redirecting to files or using a terminal that doesn't understand escapes. The usual convention is to check for these sorts of situations and turn colorization off (optionally with a flag to override the auto-detection).

I haven't looked into the details of what the standard check entails, I think it involves checking isatty and then consulting terminfo/termcap, or possibly just getting the correct escape code directly with tput. Probably some thought needs to be put into optimizing this to avoid causing performance problems by extraneous calls to the relevant programs.

[DannyBen]

Yeah. Familiar with this issue. Library functions are sort of "strap on and modify as you wish", but we can change that.

[paescuj]

You might want to take a look at https://no-color.org/

[DannyBen]

You might want to take a look at https://no-color.org/

This is magnificent. Thanks for sharing, will take a deeper look and see if it makes sense to comply with the proposal.

[paescuj]

You're very welcome!

[DannyBen]

Well - I saw the page is long, so I thought there is a deeper set of instructions, but this is a very reasonable standard, and I see it is widely supported.

@wolfgang42 - I am going to implement it as per the proposal, any objections?

[wolfgang42]

Yes, I think this is an excellent addition. Thanks @paescuj for digging up that page, standards are good!

I do also think that the color should probably switch off automatically as well, as I described in my original post, but that is more complicated and I'm OK with it being considered out-of-scope for bashly; at least now it is possible for users to do it if needed. (Also, scripts can now implement that logic themselves and set NO_COLORS in initialize() if needed.)

[DannyBen]

I do also think that the color should probably switch off automatically as well

I used to think that as well, but then I found myself in cases where colors were disabled since it was not a full TTY, in cases where I wanted to see the colors, for example: When piped into an approval test file, or in CI.

Now - as per the standard - people can easily decide.

That said, the bashly standard lib is a helper that intends to bring you code snippets. If someone insists on having something else, just edit lib/colors.sh and you have it.

[DannyBen]

Version 0.6.9 is released with this change, and also bashly was added to https://no-color.org/ - thanks for bringing up this issue and for your tips and help in implementing it.