Colorexp

Colorexp is a command line tool that allows coloring of text matches from standard input with multiple colors, something that is not easy to achieve with tools like grep and less.

Colorexp

• uses Rust's regex format, as documented here.
• supports overlapping matches (the color for the last pattern that matches will be used)

Usage

Usage: colorexp [OPTIONS] [PATTERNS]...

Arguments:
  [PATTERNS]...  Patterns

Options:
  -F, --fixed-strings          Interpret PATTERNS as fixed strings, not regular expressions
  -f, --full-match-highlight   Highlight the entire match, even if pattern contains capturing groups
  -i, --ignore-case            Perform case-insensitive matching
  -h, --no-highlight           Do not color by changing the background color
  -H, --only-highlight         Only color by changing the background color
  -o, --only-matching-lines    Only print lines with matches (suppress lines without matches)
  -g, --vary-group-colors-off  Turn off changing of colors for every capturing group. Defaults to on if exactly one pattern is given
  -G, --vary-group-colors-on   Turn on changing of colors for every capturing group. Defaults to on if exactly one pattern is given

Examples

Basic Usage

• use the -h/-H options to only colorize the text, or only the background

Overlapping matches - last match wins

• all matches are colorized, and the color of the last match will be used

Capturing groups

• when using capturing groups, only the matched group contents will be colorized

Vary colors of groups in patterns

• when exactly one pattern is given, the default is to use different colors for each capturing group
  • in case of multiple patterns, the -G option can be used to enforce varying of the colors for each group

Use the same color for all groups of a pattern

• when multiple patterns are given, the default is to use the same colors for all capturing groups of a pattern
  • in case of a single pattern, the -g option can be used to enforce use of a single color

Installation

Homebrew on macOS (arm64)

brew tap EugenDueck/tap https://github.com/EugenDueck/homebrew-tap
brew install colorexp

Linux (amd64), Windows (amd64), macOS (arm64)

• Download a Release from https://github.com/EugenDueck/colorexp-rs/releases