Is there anyway to pass terminal colors through a pipe?

As a simple example, ls -l --color=always | grep ii.

When you just run the ls -l --color=always part alone, you get the filenames color coded. But adding grep ii removes the color coding and just has the grep match highlighting.

Screenshot of both examples:

In the above example I would want ii.mp3 and ii.png filenames to retain the cyan and magenta highlighting, respectively. With or without the grep match highlighting.

Question is not specific to ls or grep.

If this is possible, is there a correct term/name for it? I am unable to locate anything.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
    2·
    6 hours ago

    For the most part, this happens because those programs check if stdout is a pseudo-terminal (pty) and automatically disable color output because if you’re doing say ls -l and try to parse it, you’ll have all the ANSI escape sequences mixed in, so for safety and predictability they disable color.

    It is unfortunately a per-program thing. It is possible to fake it using script or unbuffer according to https://stackoverflow.com/a/32981392

    Looks like socat can also be used for that: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/157463