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

## SYNOPSIS

`colout` [-h] [-e] PATTERN [COLOR] [STYLE]


## 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.

Available colors are: blue black yellow cyan green magenta white red.
Available styles are: reverse bold standard.

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


## 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 magenta home directories in _/etc/passwd_:
  colout /home/[a-z]+ magenta < /etc/passwd

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

* Color in green comments in colout sources
  colout .*\(#.*\)$ green standard < colout.py

* Color in bold green every numbers and in bold red the words _error_ in make output:
  make 2>&1 | colout [0-9]+ green standard | 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 standard | colout error | colout warning magenta | colout pragma green standard | colout /\(\\w+\)*\.\(h\|cpp\) cyan standard