Marker output

Filed under Snippets on August 13, 2026

Status markers for shell scripts, colors auto-off when piped

The marker carries the state, the color reinforces it. Colors only on a TTY, honoring NO_COLOR and TERM=dumb; piped output stays plain, markers intact.

# [*] info  [+] did something  [=] already converged  [-] warn, kept going  [x] fatal
if [ -t 1 ] && [ -z "${NO_COLOR:-}" ] && [ "${TERM:-}" != dumb ]; then
    B='\033[1;34m' G='\033[1;32m' Y='\033[1;33m' R='\033[31m' D='\033[2m' N='\033[0m'
else
    B= G= Y= R= D= N=
fi
hdr()  { printf "${B}[*]${N} %s\n" "$1"; }
ok()   { printf "${G}[+]${N} %s\n" "$1"; }
skip() { printf "${D}[=] %s${N}\n" "$1"; }
warn() { printf "${Y}[-]${N} %s\n" "$1" >&2; }
die()  { printf "${R}[x]${N} %s\n" "$1" >&2; exit 1; }