I come here in search of someone who understands dash/portable scripting
better than I do. Today, my Google-foo is failing me.
I am in the process of cleaning up someone else's semi-portable shell
script (originally written on FreeBSD). The original script uses colors,
in the form of
echo -e "\e[1;32mpassed\e[0m"
"echo" should be avoided in general and any option passed to "echo" is
non-portable. In bash, I can easily port this to printf
printf '%b' "\x1b[32;1mpassed\x1b[0m\n"
However, this approach does not work in dash. I have read both the echo
and printf sections of the dash manual, and it seems that both "\e" and
"\x" are unsupported. Using "%b" allows additional backslash-escape
sequences, but only \c and \0.
I know the purpose of dash is to provide an efficient POSIX compliant
shell. Is there really no POSIX compliant way to use color? It seems
so... 80s. Dash's manpage does state that it supports "backslash
notation as defined in ANSI X3.159-1989 (“ANSI C89”)", but I can't find
a copy of ANSI C89 online to confirm whether it includes display
attributes. ANSI C89 is old, but still... too old for color?
Am I somehow missing some hidden functionality in printf, or is there
really no POSIX compliant method of printing colors, or is Dash simply
incomplete with its POSIX support in this regard?
Any insight is most appreciated.
---Alex
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