Oh the console! Love it or loath it, if you engage in computer actions you probably end up spending a lot of time looking at a console.
Of course not all consoles are created equal. Some consoles are really just the equivalent of
while line=nextLine() ; do print line ; end
Typically this is reserved to crappy IDE’s (yes, I know that’s redundant, I’m making a hah-hah).
Some deluded souls think cygwin is a real console, only to discover half-way into trying to actually get something done that it ends up going nutso and spewing text in the most unlikely of locations. Infrequently this can lead to a series of awkward questions in the ER.
Gnome’s terminal is pretty adequate, and of course you can’t go wrong with xterm or a host of other well written, robust terminals that oddly enuff seem to show up only under flavors of UNIX (yes, netBSD… err.. Mac counts too).
Why is writing a solid console implementation so difficult?
Because a console is not about printing lines of text. A terminal is more like a pixel-based display where ever pixel is a character + presentation information.
It is a highly sophisticated user interface. Unlike the farktarded point-and-click UI’s popular today for no good reason which use a maximum of say 8 buttons, a console typically has 108+ buttons.
Hah-hah, indeed. More importantly a console is really an interpreter.
No, I don’t mean the shell, I mean the console is an interpreter. Just like with shells we have bash, tcsh and crapsh, terminals come in flavors like VT100, VT110, VT220, 3270, 5270 and plethora of others.
Since a terminals has to accept all sorts of input, the language for controlling the terminal is a done via “control codes.” Typically a control code is just a string which is difficult to type.
For example: echo <ESC>[33mCheese<ESC>[0m
What is that <ESC>? Typically it is character 27. How do you type it? On a lot of consoles, you type it like this:
- hold down the control key
- press the 'v' key
- let go of the control and 'v' key
- press the escape key
Pretty neat, huh? That works for ANSI/VT100-based terminals. Not for all terminals. Luckily for us, that's just about all we really care about.
Of course a real console application (eg: vim) cares about all terminals and you start to move away from writing control codes directly and towards using terminal apis like curses/ncurses PDQ.
For hacking purposes, VT100 terminal codes will do just fine.
I know.. what a load of historic irrelevant blather and so what and quit wasting my time! What is it good for?!
When was the last time you looked at a log file? Let me put it a different way, when did you stop looking at log files? Chances are you are watching a log file right now! I know I am!
What percentage of log output do you care about for a given task? 10%? 2%? Isn't it a drag that it just blends in with the rest?
Of course you could grep it out, but then you lose the context... Or you might forget a term and have to reproduce the problem again (again [again]).
IMHO, a kick-aspirin use for VT100 color codes is for log highlighting, and it is some simple, it can be easily scripting into a general use script.
Here is the kind of usage I would like:
usage: cat foo | line_lite.sh ( pattern highlighting )+
pattern is a ala grep
highlighting is a colon separated list of colors
the colors are
reset bright dim underline blink
reverse hidden black red green
yellow blue magenta cyan white
black_bg red_bg green_bg yellow_bg blue_bg
magenta_bg cyan_bg white_bg
That way I can use it like: tail -f some.log | line_lite.sh Exception red “some other text” green:underline
In order to make this happen, I need to convert that red, green:underline crap to the appropriate VT100 code.
Natually, I do this with sed:
_line_lite_color_to_code() {
echo ${*} | sed "s,reset,0,g;s,bright,1,g;s,dim,2,g;s,underline,4,g;s,blink,5,g;s,reverse,7,g;s,hidden,8,g;s,black,30,g;s,red,31,g;s,green,32,g;s,yellow,33,g;s,blue,34,g;s,magenta,35,g;s,cyan,36,g;s,white,37,g;s,black_bg,40,g;s,red_bg,41,g;s,green_bg,42,g;s,yellow_bg,43,g;s,blue_bg,44,g;s,magenta_bg,45,g;s,cyan_bg,46,g;s,white_bg,47,g;s,:,;,g"
}
_line_lite_code() {
_line_lite_color_to_code ${*} | sed 's,.*,ESC[&m,'
}
This will convert "green:underline" to [32;4m
Now we just need some way to do our matching and add the color code. Once again, it's sed time.
For each pair of pattern/color, we create a sed expression like: s!.*.*!&!g;
In this case we'd have s!.*some other text.*![32;4m&[0m!g;
All that we have to do is concatenate our sed expressions for each pattern/color pair and then call sed.
Viola! Arbitrarily colored logs!
Here is sample output from something that's not a log:
% jar_minder_javap sun.security.provider.PolicyFile | line_lite.sh 'static' red:bright
Compiled from "PolicyFile.java"
public class sun.security.provider.PolicyFile extends java.security.Policy{
public sun.security.provider.PolicyFile();
public sun.security.provider.PolicyFile(boolean);
public void refresh();
public boolean implies(java.security.ProtectionDomain, java.security.Permission);
public java.security.PermissionCollection getPermissions(java.security.ProtectionDomain);
public java.security.PermissionCollection getPermissions(java.security.CodeSource);
protected java.security.cert.Certificate[] getSignerCertificates(java.security.CodeSource);
static boolean access$002(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, boolean);
static boolean access$102(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, boolean);
static boolean access$202(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, boolean);
static boolean access$302(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, boolean);
static boolean access$200(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile);
static sun.security.util.Debug access$400();
static boolean access$500(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, java.net.URL, sun.security.provider.PolicyInfo);
static java.security.CodeSource access$600(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, java.security.CodeSource, boolean);
static java.lang.String access$700(sun.security.provider.PolicyFile, java.security.ProtectionDomain);
static java.security.IdentityScope access$800();
static {};
}
Sadly, my olde ascii2html script is not quite it… but I think you get the idea.
Go forth and dig them control codes, my friend! They exist only to serve your dread will.
Here is a link to a copy of the script just in case: http://brianin3d.googlepages.com/line_lite.sh
Dude has had this great link for a jillion years!
http://www.fh-jena.de/~gmueller/Kurs_halle/esc_vt100.html, what a hero!
P.S.: Yes, I advocate EMACS-hateration. set -o vi or fight!
