Re: [Help-bash] read -ep and ANSI colour sequences

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013, Matthew Cengia wrote:

> On 2013-02-20 13:00, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Feb 2013, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > ...
> > > And whatever you do, STOP hard-coding terminal-specific escape sequences.
> > > This will cease working when you run it on a terminal that uses different
> > > escape sequences.
> >
> >    I agree in principle, but for all practical purposes, there is one
> >    standard terminal nowadays, ISO 6429.
> >
> > > This is why we have termcap/terminfo libraries and a $TERM variable.
> >
> >    Which cannot be used reliably in the shell.
>
> I'm happy to be corrected, but isn't this exactly what 'tput' is for?

   Ideally. However, there are two versions of tput; one uses termcap
   and the other uses terminfo. The commands are not the same for
   both, so portability is a problem.

   The POSIX specification only requires tput to have three operands:
   clear, init, and reset.

   The ISO 6429 sequences are at least as portable as tput, and
   probably more so.

--
   Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com/>
   Author:
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)