colout(1) -- Color Up Arbitrary Command Ouput
=============================================

## SYNOPSIS

`colout` [-h] [-e] PATTERN [COLOR(S)] [STYLE(S)]


## DESCRIPTION

`colout` read lines of text stream on the standard input and output characters 
matching a given regular expression <PATTERN> in given <COLOR> and <STYLE>.

If groups are specified in the regular expression pattern, only them are taken
into account, else the whole matching pattern is colored.

You can specify severall colors or styles when using groups by separating them
with commas. If you indicate more colors than groups, the last ones will be ignored.
If you ask for less colors, the last one will be duplicated across remaining
groups.

Available colors are: blue, black, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, white, red or 
any number between 0 and 255.

Available styles are: normal, bold, faint, italic, underline, blink, 
rapid_blink, reverse, conceal.

When not specified, a <COLOR> defaults to _red_ and a <STYLE> defaults to _bold_.

`colout` is released under the GNU Public License v3.

## OPTIONS

* `-h`, `--help`:
  Show an help message and exit

* `-e`, `--stderr`:
  Output on the standard error instead of standard output.


## REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

A regular expression (or _regex_) is a pattern that describes a set of strings
that matches it. 

`colout` understands regex as specifed in the _re_ python module. Given that
`colout` is generally called by the command line, you may have to escape 
special characters that would be recognize by your shell.


## EXAMPLES

* Color in bold red every occurence of the word _color_ in colout sources:
  cat colout.py | colout color red bold

* Color in bold violet home directories in _/etc/passwd_:
  colout /home/[a-z]+ 135 < /etc/passwd

* Color in yellow user/groups id, in bold green name and in bold red home directories in _/etc/passwd_:
  colout :x:\([0-9]+:[0-9]+\):\([a-z]+\).*\(/home/[a-z]+\) yellow,green,red normal,bold < /etc/passwd

* Color in yellow file permissions with read rights for everyone:
  ls -l | colout .\(r.-\){3} yellow normal

* Color in green read permission, in bold red write and execution ones:
  ls -l | colout \(r\)\(w*\)\(x*\) green,red normal,bold

* Color in green comments in colout sources:
  colout .*\(#.*\)$ green normal < colout.py
  
* Color in light green comments in non-empty colout sources, with the sharp in bold green:
  grep -v ^\\s*$ colout.py | colout .*\(#\)\(.*\)$ green,119 bold,normal

* Color in bold green every numbers and in bold red the words _error_ in make output:
  make 2>&1 | colout [0-9]+ green normal | colout error

* Color a make output, line numbers in yellow, errors in bold red, warning in magenta, pragma in green and C++ file base names in cyan:
  make 2>&1 | colout :\([0-9]+\):[0-9]* yellow normal | colout error | colout warning magenta | colout pragma green normal | colout /\(\\w+\)*\.\(h\|cpp\) cyan normal