How do I output coloured text to a Linux terminal?

You need to output ANSI colour codes. Note that not all terminals support this; if colour sequences are not supported, garbage will show up.

Example:

 cout << "\033[1;31mbold red text\033[0m\n";

Here, \033 is the ESC character, ASCII 27. It is followed by [, then zero or more numbers separated by ;, and finally the letter m. The numbers describe the colour and format to switch to from that point onwards.

The codes for foreground and background colours are:

         foreground background
black        30         40
red          31         41
green        32         42
yellow       33         43
blue         34         44
magenta      35         45
cyan         36         46
white        37         47

Additionally, you can use these:

reset             0  (everything back to normal)
bold/bright       1  (often a brighter shade of the same colour)
underline         4
inverse           7  (swap foreground and background colours)
bold/bright off  21
underline off    24
inverse off      27

See the table on Wikipedia for other, less widely supported codes.

---

To determine whether your terminal supports colour sequences, read the value of the TERM environment variable. It should specify the particular terminal type used (e.g. vt100, gnome-terminal, xterm, screen, ...). Then look that up in the terminfo database; check the colors capability.

Before you going to output any color you need make sure you are in a terminal:

[ -t 1 ] && echo 'Yes I am in a terminal'  # isatty(3) call in C

Then you need to check terminal capability if it support color

on systems with terminfo (Linux based) you can obtain quantity of supported colors as

Number_Of_colors_Supported=$(tput colors)

on systems with termcap (BSD based) you can obtain quantity of supported colors as

Number_Of_colors_Supported=$(tput Co)

Then make you decision:

[ ${Number_Of_colors_Supported} -ge 8 ] && {
    echo 'You are fine and can print colors'
} || {
    echo 'Terminal does not support color'
}

---

BTW, do not use coloring as it was suggested before with ESC characters. Use standard call to terminal capability that will assign you CORRECT colors that particular terminal support.

BSD Based

fg_black="$(tput AF 0)"
fg_red="$(tput AF 1)"
fg_green="$(tput AF 2)"
fg_yellow="$(tput AF 3)"
fg_blue="$(tput AF 4)"
fg_magenta="$(tput AF 5)"
fg_cyan="$(tput AF 6)"
fg_white="$(tput AF 7)"
reset="$(tput me)"

Linux Based

fg_black="$(tput setaf 0)"
fg_red="$(tput setaf 1)"
fg_green="$(tput setaf 2)"
fg_yellow="$(tput setaf 3)"
fg_blue="$(tput setaf 4)"
fg_magenta="$(tput setaf 5)"
fg_cyan="$(tput setaf 6)"
fg_white="$(tput setaf 7)"
reset="$(tput sgr0)"

Use As

echo -e "${fg_red}  Red  ${fg_green} Bull ${reset}"

Basics

I have written a C++ class which can be used to set the foreground and background color of output. This sample program serves as an example of printing This ->word<- is red. and formatting it so that the foreground color of word is red.

#include "colormod.h" // namespace Color
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
    Color::Modifier red(Color::FG_RED);
    Color::Modifier def(Color::FG_DEFAULT);
    cout << "This ->" << red << "word" << def << "<- is red." << endl;
}

Source

#include <ostream>
namespace Color {
    enum Code {
        FG_RED      = 31,
        FG_GREEN    = 32,
        FG_BLUE     = 34,
        FG_DEFAULT  = 39,
        BG_RED      = 41,
        BG_GREEN    = 42,
        BG_BLUE     = 44,
        BG_DEFAULT  = 49
    };
    class Modifier {
        Code code;
    public:
        Modifier(Code pCode) : code(pCode) {}
        friend std::ostream&
        operator<<(std::ostream& os, const Modifier& mod) {
            return os << "\033[" << mod.code << "m";
        }
    };
}

Advanced

You may want to add additional features to the class. It is, for example, possible to add the color magenta and even styles like boldface. To do this, just an another entry to the Code enumeration. This is a good reference.