ANSI escape code

In computing, ANSI escape codes (or escape sequences) are a method using in-band signaling to control the formatting, color, and other output options on video text terminals. To encode this formatting information, certain sequences of bytes are embedded into the text, which the terminal looks for and interprets as commands, not as character codes.

ANSI codes were introduced in the 1970s and became widespread in the minicomputer/mainframe market by the early 1980s. They were used by the nascent bulletin board system market to offer improved displays compared to earlier systems lacking cursor movement, leading to even more widespread use.

Although hardware text terminals have become increasingly rare in the 21st century, the relevance of the ANSI standard persists because most terminal emulators interpret at least some of the ANSI escape sequences in the output text. One notable exception was the Win32 console component of Microsoft Windows before Windows 10 update TH2.^[1]

History

Almost all manufacturers of video terminals added vendor-specific escape sequences to perform operations such as placing the cursor at arbitrary positions on the screen. One example is the VT52 terminal, which allowed the cursor to be placed at an x,y location on the screen by sending the ESC character, a y character, and then two characters representing with numerical values equal to the x,y location plus 32 (thus starting at the ASCII space character and avoiding the control characters).

As these sequences were different for different platforms, elaborate libraries such as termcap had to be created so programs could use the same API to work with any terminal. Most of these systems required sending numbers (such as row and column) as the binary values of the characters; for some programming languages, and for systems that did not use ASCII internally, it was often difficult or impossible to turn a number into the correct character.

The ANSI standard attempted to address these problems by making a command set that all terminals would use and requiring all numeric information to be transmitted as ASCII numbers. The first standard in the series was ECMA-48, adopted in 1976. It was a continuation of a series of character coding standards, the first one being ECMA-6 from 1965, a 7-bit standard from which ISO 646 originates. The name "ANSI escape sequence" dates from 1979 when ANSI adopted ANSI X3.64. The ANSI X3L2 committee collaborated with the ECMA committee TC 1 to produce nearly identical standards. These two standards were merged into an international standard, ISO 6429.^[2] In 1994, ANSI withdrew its standard in favor of the international standard.

The first popular video terminal to support these sequences was the Digital VT100, introduced in 1978.^[3] This model was very successful in the market, which sparked a variety of VT100 clones, among the earliest and most popular of which was the much more affordable Zenith Z-19 in 1979.^[4] Others included the Qume QVT-108, Televideo TVI-970, Wyse WY-99GT as well as optional "VT100" or "VT103" or "ANSI" modes with varying degrees of compatibility on many other brands. The popularity of these gradually led to more and more software (especially bulletin board systems) assuming the escape sequences worked, leading to almost all new terminals and emulator programs supporting them.

In 1981, ANSI X3.64 was adopted for use in the US government by FIPS publication 86. Later, the US government stopped duplicating industry standards, so FIPS pub. 86 was withdrawn.^[5]

ECMA-48 has been updated several times and is currently at its 5th edition, from 1991. It is also adopted by ISO and IEC as standard ISO/IEC 6429.

Platform support

The widespread use of ANSI by bulletin boards and online services led to almost universal platform support by the mid 1980s. In most cases this took the form of a terminal emulator (such as xterm on Unix or the OS X Terminal or ZTerm on MacOS and many communication programs for the IBM PC), although there was increasing support in the standard text output of many operating systems.

Unix and the AmigaOS all included some ANSI support in the OS, which led to widespread use of ANSI by programs running on those platforms. Unix-like operating systems could produce ANSI codes through libraries such as termcap and curses used by many pieces of software to update the display. These libraries are supposed to support non-ANSI terminals as well, but this is so rarely tested nowadays that they are unlikely to work. Many games and shell scripts (such as colored prompts) directly write the ANSI sequences and thus cannot be used on a terminal that does not interpret them.

AmigaOS not only interprets ANSI code sequences for text output to the screen, the AmigaOS printer driver also interprets them (with extensions proprietary to AmigaOS) and translates them into the codes required for the particular printer that is actually attached.^[6]

In spite of its popularity, ANSI codes were not universally supported. Support was not built-in on the original "classic" Mac OS, while the Atari ST used the command system adapted from the VT52 with some expansions for color support.^[7]

Windows and DOS

MS-DOS 1.x did not support the ANSI or any other escape sequences. Only a few control characters (BEL, CR, LF, BS) were interpreted by the underlying BIOS, making it almost^[8] impossible to do any kind of full-screen application. Any display effects had to be done with BIOS calls, which were notoriously slow, or by directly manipulating the IBM PC hardware.

DOS 2.0 introduced the ability to add a device driver for the ANSI escape sequences – the de facto standard being ANSI.SYS, but others like ANSI.COM,^[9] NANSI.SYS^[10] and ANSIPLUS.EXE are used as well (these are considerably faster as they bypass the BIOS). Slowness and the fact that it was not installed by default made software rarely take advantage of it; instead, applications continued to directly manipulate the hardware to get the text display needed. ANSI.SYS and similar drivers continued to work in Windows 9x up to Windows Me, and in NT-derived systems for 16-bit legacy programs executing under the NTVDM.

The Win32 console did not support ANSI escape sequences at all until Windows 10 "Threshold 2".^[1] Some replacements or additions for the console window such as JP Software's TCC (formerly 4NT), Michael J. Mefford's ANSI.COM, Jason Hood's ANSICON^[11] and Maximus5's ConEmu do interpret ANSI escape sequences printed by programs.

Some software internally interprets ANSI escape sequences in text being printed and translates them to calls to manipulate the color and cursor position in the command output window,^[12] to make it easier to port software using ANSI to Windows.

Sequence elements

Sequences have different length. All sequences start with the character ESC (ASCII decimal 27 / hex 0x1B / octal 033), followed by a second character in the range ASCII 64 to 95 (@ to _ / hex 0x40 to 0x5F).^[13]^:5.3.a

In 8-bit environments, these two character sequences can be merged into single byte, using the 0x80 to 0x9F control character range.^[13]^:5.3.b Devices that only support 7-bit ASCII recognize only the two-character sequence. The same is true for devices that support 8-bit characters but use the 0x80 to 0x9F control character range for other purposes. On terminals that use UTF-8 encoding, both forms take two bytes (the Control Sequence Introducer (CSI) in UTF-8 is 0xC2, 0x9B), but the ESC[ sequence is clearer.

However, most of the sequences are more than two characters and start with the characters ESC and [ (left bracket / 0x5B). On 8-bit-capable systems there is a single character 155 / 0x9B / 0233 as well, still the ESC[ two-character sequence is more often used than the single-character alternative (for details see C0 and C1 control codes).^[13]^:5.4.a This sequence is called CSI for Control Sequence Introducer (or Control Sequence Initiator). The final character of these sequences is in the range ASCII 64 to 126 (@ to ~ / hex 0x40 to 0x7E).^[13]^:5.4 Sequences that begin with the escape character are named escape sequences. Sequences beginning with the CSI are named control sequences. A sequence may be both an escape sequence and a control sequence.

Though some encodings use multiple bytes per character, the following discussion is restricted to ASCII characters, and thus assumes a single byte for each character.

Non-CSI codes

The following describe some of the control sequences that do not begin with the CSI sequence. Note that other C0 codes besides ESC — commonly BEL, BS, CR, LF, FF, TAB, VT, SO, and SI — may produce similar or identical effects to some control sequences when output.

Some non-CSI escape sequences (not a complete list)
Escape Sequence	Single-Byte Equivalent	Name	Effect
ESC N	0x8e	SS2 – Single Shift Two	Select a single character from one of the alternate character sets. In xterm, SS2 selects the G2 character set, and SS3 selects the G3 character set.^[14]
ESC O	0x8f	SS3 – Single Shift Three
ESC P	0x90	DCS – Device Control String	Controls a device. In xterm, uses of this sequence include defining User-Defined Keys, and requesting or setting Termcap/Terminfo data.^[14]
ESC \	0x9c	ST – String Terminator	Terminates strings in other controls (including APC, DCS, OSC, PM, and SOS).^[13]^:8.3.143
ESC ]	0x9d	OSC – Operating System Command	Starts a control string for the operating system to use. OSC sequences are similar to CSI sequences, but are not limited to integer arguments. In general, these control sequences are terminated by ST.^[13]^:8.3.89 In xterm, they may also be terminated by BEL.^[14] For example, in xterm, the window title can be set by `OSC 0;this is the window title BEL`.
ESC X	0x98	SOS – Start of String	Takes an argument of a string of text, terminated by ST. The uses for these string control sequences are defined by the application^[13]^{:8.3.2,8.3.128} or privacy discipline.^[13]^:8.3.94 These functions are not implemented and the arguments are ignored by xterm.^[14]
ESC ^	0x9e	PM – Privacy Message
ESC _	0x9f	APC – Application Program Command
ESC c		RIS – Reset to Initial State	Resets the device to its original state. This may include (if applicable): reset graphic rendition, clear tabulation stops, reset to default font, and more.

Note: pressing special keys on the keyboard, as well as outputting many xterm CSI, DCS, or OSC sequences, often produces a CSI, DCS, or OSC sequence.

CSI codes

The general structure of most ANSI escape sequences is CSI [private mode character(s?)] n1 ; n2... [trailing intermediate character(s?)] letter. The final byte, modified by private mode characters and trailing intermediate characters, specifies the command. The numbers are optional parameters. The default value used for omitted parameters varies with the command, but is usually 1 or 0. If trailing parameters are omitted, the trailing semicolons may also be omitted.

The final byte is technically any character in the range 64–126 (hex 0x40 to 0x7E, ASCII @ to ~), and may be modified with leading intermediate bytes in the range 32 to 47 (hex 0x20 to 0x2F, ASCII space to /).

The colon (ASCII decimal 58, hex 0x3A) is the only character not a part of the general sequence. It was left for future standardization, so any sequence containing it should be ignored.

Although multiple private mode characters or trailing intermediates are permitted, there are no such known usages.

If there are any leading private mode characters, the main body of the sequence could theoretically contain any order of characters in the range 48–63 (hex 0x30–0x3F, ASCII 0 to ?) instead of a well-formed semicolon-separated list of numbers, but all known terminals use the non-digit characters in this range as flags. Sequences are also private if the final byte is in the range 112 to 126 (hex 0x70 to 0x7E, ASCII p–~).

Examples of private escape codes include the DECTCEM (DEC text cursor enable mode) shown below. It was first introduced for the VT-300 series of video terminals.

The behavior of the terminal is undefined in the case where a CSI sequence contains any character outside of the range 32 to 126 (hex 0x20–0x7E, ASCII space–~). These illegal characters are either C0 control characters (the range 0–31, hex 0x00–0x1F), character 127 (hex 0x7F, ASCII DEL), or high-ASCII characters (the range 128–255, hex 0x80–0xFF).

Possibilities for handling illegal characters in a CSI sequence include:

1. Assuming the end of the CSI sequence, ignoring it and treating further characters as data;

2. Ignoring this sequence including all future characters through the next character that would normally end a CSI sequence (anything in the range 64–126 (hex 0x40–0x7E, ASCII@–~)); or

3. Processing any control code as the terminal normally would outside of a CSI sequence before continuing to parse the rest of the sequence.

Some ANSI control codes (not a complete list)
Code	Name	Effect
CSI `n` A	CUU – Cursor Up	Moves the cursor $n$ (default `1`) cells in the given direction. If the cursor is already at the edge of the screen, this has no effect.
CSI `n` B	CUD – Cursor Down
CSI `n` C	CUF – Cursor Forward
CSI `n` D	CUB – Cursor Back
CSI `n` E	CNL – Cursor Next Line	Moves cursor to beginning of the line $n$ (default `1`) lines down. (not ANSI.SYS)
CSI `n` F	CPL – Cursor Previous Line	Moves cursor to beginning of the line $n$ (default `1`) lines up. (not ANSI.SYS)
CSI `n` G	CHA – Cursor Horizontal Absolute	Moves the cursor to column $n$ (default `1`). (not ANSI.SYS)
CSI `n` ; `m` H	CUP – Cursor Position	Moves the cursor to row $n$ , column $m$ . The values are 1-based, and default to `1` (top left corner) if omitted. A sequence such as `CSI ;5H` is a synonym for `CSI 1;5H` as well as `CSI 17;H` is the same as `CSI 17H` and `CSI 17;1H`
CSI `n` J	ED – Erase in Display	Clears part of the screen. If $n$ is `0` (or missing), clear from cursor to end of screen. If $n$ is `1`, clear from cursor to beginning of the screen. If $n$ is `2`, clear entire screen (and moves cursor to upper left on DOS ANSI.SYS). If $n$ is `3`, clear entire screen and delete all lines saved in the scrollback buffer (this feature was added for xterm and is supported by other terminal applications).
CSI `n` K	EL – Erase in Line	Erases part of the line. If $n$ is zero (or missing), clear from cursor to the end of the line. If $n$ is one, clear from cursor to beginning of the line. If $n$ is two, clear entire line. Cursor position does not change.
CSI `n` S	SU – Scroll Up	Scroll whole page up by $n$ (default `1`) lines. New lines are added at the bottom. (not ANSI.SYS)
CSI `n` T	SD – Scroll Down	Scroll whole page down by $n$ (default `1`) lines. New lines are added at the top. (not ANSI.SYS)
CSI `n` ; `m` f	HVP – Horizontal and Vertical Position	Moves the cursor to row $n$ , column $m$ . Both default to `1` if omitted. Same as CUP
CSI `n` m	SGR – Select Graphic Rendition	Sets SGR parameters, including text color. After CSI can be zero or more parameters separated with `;`. With no parameters, `CSI m` is treated as `CSI 0 m` (reset / normal), which is typical of most of the ANSI escape sequences.
CSI 5i	AUX Port On	Enable aux serial port usually for local serial printer
CSI 4i	AUX Port Off	Disable aux serial port usually for local serial printer
CSI 6n	DSR – Device Status Report	Reports the cursor position (CPR) to the application as (as though typed at the keyboard) `ESC[n;mR`, where $n$ is the row and $m$ is the column.)
CSI s	SCP – Save Cursor Position	Saves the cursor position.
CSI u	RCP – Restore Cursor Position	Restores the cursor position.
CSI ?25l	DECTCEM	Hides the cursor. (Note: the trailing character is lowercase `L`.)
CSI ?25h	DECTCEM	Shows the cursor.

SGR (Select Graphic Rendition) parameters
Code	Effect	Note
0	Reset / Normal	all attributes off
1	Bold or increased intensity
2	Faint (decreased intensity)	Not widely supported.
3	Italic: on	Not widely supported. Sometimes treated as inverse.
4	Underline: Single
5	Blink: Slow	less than 150 per minute
6	Blink: Rapid	MS-DOS ANSI.SYS; 150+ per minute; not widely supported
7	Image: Negative	inverse or reverse; swap foreground and background (reverse video)
8	Conceal	Not widely supported.
9	Crossed-out	Characters legible, but marked for deletion. Not widely supported.
10	Primary(default) font
11–19	$n$ -th alternate font	Select the $n$ -th alternate font (14 being the fourth alternate font, up to 19 being the 9th alternate font).
20	Fraktur	hardly ever supported
21	Bold: off or Underline: Double	Bold off not widely supported; double underline hardly ever supported.
22	Normal color or intensity	Neither bold nor faint
23	Not italic, not Fraktur
24	Underline: None	Not singly or doubly underlined
25	Blink: off
26	Reserved
27	Image: Positive
28	Reveal	conceal off
29	Not crossed out
30–37	Set text color (foreground)	`30` + $n$ , where $n$ is from the color table below
38	Reserved for extended set foreground color	typical supported next arguments are `5;n` where $n$ is color index (`0..255`) or `2;r;g;b` where $r,g,b$ are red, green and blue color channels (out of `255`)
39	Default text color (foreground)	implementation defined (according to standard)
40–47	Set background color	`40` + $n$ , where $n$ is from the color table below
48	Reserved for extended set background color	typical supported next arguments are `5;n` where $n$ is color index (`0..255`) or `2;r;g;b` where $r,g,b$ are red, green and blue color channels (out of `255`)
49	Default background color	implementation defined (according to standard)
50	Reserved
51	Framed
52	Encircled
53	Overlined
54	Not framed or encircled
55	Not overlined
56–59	Reserved
60	ideogram underline or right side line	hardly ever supported
61	ideogram double underline or double line on the right side	hardly ever supported
62	ideogram overline or left side line	hardly ever supported
63	ideogram double overline or double line on the left side	hardly ever supported
64	ideogram stress marking	hardly ever supported
65	ideogram attributes off	hardly ever supported, reset the effects of all of `60`–`64`
90–97	Set foreground text color, high intensity	aixterm (not in standard)
100–107	Set background color, high intensity	aixterm (not in standard)

Colors

The original specification only had 8 colors, and just gave them names. The SGR parameters 30-37 selected the foreground color, while 40-47 selected the background. Quite a few terminals implemented "bold" (SGR code 1) as a brighter color rather than a different font, thus providing 8 additional foreground colors. Usually you could not get these as background colors, though sometimes inverse video (SGR code 7) would allow that. Examples: to get black letters on white background use ESC[30;47m, to get red use ESC[31m, to get bright red use ESC[31;1m. To reset colors to their defaults, use ESC[39;49m (not supported on some terminals), or reset all attributes with ESC[0m.

Color table^[15]
Foreground Code	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37
Background Code	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47
Normal	Black	Red	Green	Yellow	Blue	Magenta	Cyan	White
Bright	Black	Red	Green	Yellow	Blue	Magenta	Cyan	White

When hardware started using 8-bit DACs several pieces of software assigned 24-bit color numbers to these names. The chart below shows default RGB assignments for some common hardware and software.

	VGA^[16]	CMD^[17]	Terminal.app	PuTTY	mIRC	xterm	X^[18]
Normal	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0	0, 0, 0
	170, 0, 0	128, 0, 0	194, 54, 33	187, 0, 0	127, 0, 0	205, 0, 0	255, 0, 0
	0, 170, 0	0, 128, 0	37, 188, 36	0, 187, 0	0, 147, 0	0, 205, 0	0, 255, 0
	170, 85, 0^[19]	128, 128, 0	173, 173, 39	187, 187, 0	252, 127, 0	205, 205, 0	255, 255, 0
	0, 0, 170	0, 0, 128	73, 46, 225	0, 0, 187	0, 0, 127	0, 0, 238^[20]	0, 0, 255
	170, 0, 170	128, 0, 128	211, 56, 211	187, 0, 187	156, 0, 156	205, 0, 205	255, 0, 255
	0, 170, 170	0, 128, 128	51, 187, 200	0, 187, 187	0, 147, 147	0, 205, 205	0, 255, 255
	170, 170, 170	192, 192, 192	203, 204, 205	187, 187, 187	210, 210, 210	229, 229, 229	255, 255, 255
Bright	85, 85, 85	128, 128, 128	129, 131, 131	85, 85, 85	127, 127, 127	127, 127, 127
	255, 85, 85	255, 0, 0	252,57,31	255, 85, 85	255, 0, 0	255, 0, 0
	85, 255, 85	0, 255, 0	49, 231, 34	85, 255, 85	0, 252, 0	0, 255, 0	144, 238, 144
	255, 255, 85	255, 255, 0	234, 236, 35	255, 255, 85	255, 255, 0	255, 255, 0	255, 255, 224
	85, 85, 255	0, 0, 255	88, 51, 255	85, 85, 255	0, 0, 252	92, 92, 255^[21]	173, 216, 230
	255, 85, 255	255, 0, 255	249, 53, 248	255, 85, 255	255, 0, 255	255, 0, 255
	85, 255, 255	0, 255, 255	20, 240, 240	85, 255, 255	0, 255, 255	0, 255, 255	224, 255, 255
	255, 255, 255	255, 255, 255	233, 235, 235	255, 255, 255	255, 255, 255	255, 255, 255

As 256-color lookup tables became common on graphic cards, escape sequences were added to select from a pre-defined set of 256 colors:

   ESC[ … 38;5;<n> … m Select foreground color
   ESC[ … 48;5;<n> … m Select background color
   0x00-0x07:  standard colors (as in ESC [ 30–37 m)
   0x08-0x0F:  high intensity colors (as in ESC [ 90–97 m)
   0x10-0xE7:  6 × 6 × 6 cube (216 colors): 16 + 36 × r + 6 × g + b (0 ≤ r, g, b ≤ 5)
   0xE8-0xFF:  grayscale from black to white in 24 steps

256-color mode — foreground: ESC[38;5;#m background: ESC[48;5;#m

Standard colors

High-intensity colors

216 colors

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

193

194

195

196

197

198

199

200

201

202

203

204

205

206

207

208

209

210

211

212

213

214

215

216

217

218

219

220

221

222

223

224

225

226

227

228

229

230

231

Grayscale colors

232

233

234

235

236

237

238

239

240

241

242

243

244

245

246

247

248

249

250

251

252

253

254

255

As "true color" graphic cards with 16 to 24 bits of color became common, Xterm,^[14] KDE's Konsole,^[22] as well as all libvte based terminals^[23] (including GNOME Terminal) support ISO-8613-3 24-bit foreground and background color setting Quoting one of the text-files in its source-tree:^[24]

   ESC[ … 38;2;<r>;<g>;<b> … m Select RGB foreground color
   ESC[ … 48;2;<r>;<g>;<b> … m Select RGB background color

The ITU's "T.416 Information technology - Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures". which was adopted as ISO/IEC International Standard 8613-6 gives more detail:

   ESC[ … 38:2:<r>:<g>:<b>:<unused>:<CS tolerance>:<Color-Space: 0="CIELUV"; 1="CIELAB">m Select RGB foreground color
   ESC[ … 48:2:<r>:<g>:<b>:<unused>:<CS tolerance>:<Color-Space: 0="CIELUV"; 1="CIELAB">m Select RGB background color

Note that this uses the otherwise reserved ':' character to separate the sub-options which may have been a source of confusion for real-world implementations. It also documents using '3' as the second parameter to specify colors using a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow scheme and '4' for a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black one, the latter using the position marked as "unused" in the above examples for the Black component.

Xterm allows also setting colors by X11 color names using^[14]

   ESC]10;<foreground>BEL
   ESC]11;<background>BEL

where <foreground> and <background> are text, and BEL is the ASCII BEL character (code 7). The closing bracket instead of an opening bracket reveals that it belongs to the operating system control commands.

Examples

CSI 2 J — This clears the screen and, on some devices, locates the cursor to the y,x position 1,1 (upper left corner).

CSI 32 m — This makes text green. On MS-DOS, normally the green would be dark, dull green, so you may wish to enable Bold with the sequence CSI 1 m which would make it bright green, or combined as CSI 32 ; 1 m. MS-DOS ANSI.SYS uses the Bold state to make the character Bright; also the Blink state can be set (via INT 10, AX 1003h, BL 00h) to render the Background in the Bright mode. MS-DOS ANSI.SYS does not support SGR codes 90–97 and 100–107 directly.

CSI 0 ; 6 8 ; "DIR" ; 13 p — This reassigns the key F10 to send to the keyboard buffer the string "DIR" and ENTER, which in the DOS command line would display the contents of the current directory. (MS-DOS ANSI.SYS only) This was sometimes used for ANSI bombs. This is a private-use code (as indicated by the letter p), using a non-standard extension to include a string-valued parameter. Following the letter of the standard would consider the sequence to end at the letter D.

CSI s — This saves the cursor position. Using the sequence CSI u will restore it to the position. Say the current cursor position is 7(y) and 10(x). The sequence CSI s will save those two numbers. Now you can move to a different cursor position, such as 20(y) and 3(x), using the sequence CSI 20 ; 3 H or CSI 20 ; 3 f. Now if you use the sequence CSI u the cursor position will return to 7(y) and 10(x). Some terminals require the DEC sequences ESC 7 / ESC 8 instead which is more widely supported.

Example of use in shell scripting

ANSI escape codes are often used in UNIX and UNIX-like terminals to provide syntax highlighting. For example, on compatible terminals, the following list command color-codes file and directory names by type.

ls --color

Users can employ escape codes in their scripts by including them as part of standard output or standard error. For example, the following GNU sed command embellishes the output of the make command by displaying lines containing words starting with "WARN" in reverse video and words starting with "ERR" in bright yellow on a dark red background (letter case is ignored). The representations of the codes are highlighted.^[25]

make 2>&1 | sed -e 's/.*\bWARN.*/\x1b[7m&\x1b[0m/i' -e 's/.*\bERR.*/\x1b[93;41 m&\x1b[0m/i'

The following Bash function flashes the terminal (by alternately sending reverse and normal video mode codes) until the user presses a key.^[26]

flasher () { while true; do printf \\e[?5h; sleep 0.1; printf \\e[?5l; read -s -n1 -t1 && break; done; }

This can be used to alert a programmer when a lengthy command terminates, such as with make ; flasher .^[27]

printf \\033c

This will reset the console, similar to the command reset on modern Linux systems; however it should work even on older Linux systems and on other (non-Linux) UNIX variants.

Invalid and ambiguous sequences in use

The Linux console uses OSC P n rr gg bb to change the palette, which, if hard-coded into an application, may hang other terminals. However, appending ST will be ignored by Linux and form a proper, ignorable sequence for other terminals.
On the Linux console, certain function keys generate sequences of the form CSI [ char. The CSI sequence should terminate on the [.
Old versions of Terminator generate SS3 1; modifiers char when F1–F4 are pressed with modifiers. The faulty behavior was copied from GNOME Terminal.
xterm replies CSI row ; column R if asked for cursor position and CSI 1 ; modifiers R if the F3 key is pressed with modifiers, which collide in the case of row == 1. This can be avoided by using the ? private modifier, which will be reflected in the response.
many terminals prepend ESC to any character that is typed with the alt key down. This creates ambiguity for uppercase letters and symbols @[\]^_, which would form C1 codes.
Konsole generates SS3 modifiers char when F1–F4 are pressed with modifiers.

Notes

1 2 Oisin Grehan (4 February 2016). "Windows 10 TH2 (v1511) Console Host Enhancements". Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ Historical version of ECMA-48
↑ Paul Williams (2006). "Digital's Video Terminals". VT100.net. Retrieved 17 August 2011.
↑ Heathkit Company (1979). "Heathkit Catalog 1979". Heathkit Company. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2011.
↑ Withdrawn FIPS Listed by Number
↑ "Amiga Printer Command Definitions". Commodore. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
↑ "Using C-Kermit", p. 88.
↑ The screen display could be replaced by drawing the entire new screen's contents at the bottom, scrolling the previous screen up sufficiently to erase all the old text. The user would see the scrolling, and the hardware cursor would be left at the very bottom. Some early batch files achieved rudimentary "full screen" displays in this way.
↑ Michael Mefford (7 February 1989). "ANSI.com: Download It Here". PC Magazine. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
↑ Dan Kegel, Eric Auer (28 February 1999). "Nansi and NNansi – ANSI Drivers for MS-DOS". Dan Kegel's Web Hostel. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
↑ Jason Hood (2005). "Process ANSI escape sequences for Windows console programs". Jason Hood's Home page. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
↑ "colorama 0.2.5 :". Python Package Index. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Standard ECMA-48: Control Functions for Coded Character Sets" (Fifth ed.). Ecma International. June 1991.
1 2 3 4 5 6 "XTerm Control Sequences". invisible-island.net. 13 January 2014. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
↑ The names are standard, however the exact shade/hue/value of colors are not standardized and will depend on the device used to display them.
↑ Typical colors that are used when booting PCs and leaving them in text mode, which used a 16-entry color table. The colors are different in the EGA/VGA graphic modes.
↑ As of Windows XP
↑ Above color name from X11 rgb.txt color database, with "light" prefixed for the bright colors
↑ On terminals based on CGA compatible hardware, such as ANSI.SYS running on DOS, this normal intensity foreground color is rendered as Orange. CGA RGBI monitors contained hardware to modify the dark yellow color to an orange/brown color by reducing the green component. See this ansi art as an example.
↑ Changed from 0,0,205 in July 2004 "Patch #192 – 2004/7/12 – XFree86 4.4.99.9".
↑ Changed from 0,0,255 in July 2004 "Patch #192 – 2004/7/12 – XFree86 4.4.99.9".
↑ "color-spaces.pl (a copy of 256colors2.pl from xterm dated 11 July 1999)". KDE. 6 December 2006.
↑ "libvte's bug report and patches". GNOME Bugzilla. 4 April 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
↑ "README.moreColors". KDE. 22 April 2010.
↑ "Chapter 9. System tips". debian.org.
↑ "VT100.net: Digital VT100 User Guide". Retrieved 19 January 2015.
↑ "bash – How to get a notification when my commands are done – Ask Different". Retrieved 19 January 2015.

External links

Standard ECMA-48, Control Functions For Coded Character Sets. (5th edition, June 1991), European Computer Manufacturers Association, Geneva 1991 (also published by ISO and IEC as standard ISO/IEC 6429)
vt100.net DEC Documents
ANSI.SYS -- ansi terminal emulation escape sequences at the Wayback Machine (archived 6 February 2006)
Xterm / Escape Sequences
AIXterm / Escape Sequences
A collection of escape sequences for terminals that are vaguely compliant with ECMA-48 and friends.
ANSI Escape Sequences
ITU-T Rec. T.416 (03/93) Information technology – Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures

Character encodings
Early telecommunications	ASCII ISO/IEC 646 ISO/IEC 6937 T.61 BCDIC Baudot code Morse code Telegraph code Wabun code Special telegraphy codes Non-Latin Chinese Cyrillic Needle telegraph codes
ISO/IEC 8859	-1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16
Bibliographic use	ANSEL ISO 5426 / 5426-2 / 5427 / 5428 / 6438 / 6861 / 6862 / 10585 / 10586 / 10754 / 11822 MARC-8
National standards	ArmSCII BraSCII CNS 11643 ELOT 927 GOST 10859 GB 18030 HKSCS ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KOI-7 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 PASCII SI 960 TIS-620 TSCII VISCII YUSCII
EUC	CN JP KR TW
ISO/IEC 2022	CN JP KR CCCII
MacOS code pages ("scripts")	Arabic Celtic CentEuro ChineseSimp / EUC-CN ChineseTrad / Big5 Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari Dingbats Esperanto Farsi Gaelic Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Iceland Japanese / ShiftJIS Korean / EUC-KR Latin-1 Roman Romanian Sámi Symbol Thai / TIS-620 Turkish Ukrainian
DOS code pages	100 111 112 113 151 152 161 162 163 164 165 166 210 220 301 437 449 489 620 667 668 707 708 709 710 711 714 715 720 721 737 768 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 790 850 851 852 853 854 855/872 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864/17248 865 866/808 867 868 869 874/1161/1162 876 877 878 881 882 883 884 885 891 895 896 897 898 899 900 903 904 906 907 909 910 911 926 927 928 929 932 934 936 938 941 942 943 944 946 947 948 949 950/1370 951 966 991 1034 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 1044 1046 1086 1088 1092 1093 1098 1108 1109 1114 1115 1116 1117 1118 1119 1125/848 1126 1127 1131/849 1139 1167 1168 1300 1351 1361 1362 1363 1372 1373 1374 1375 1380 1381 1385 1386 1391 1392 1393 1394 Kamenický Mazovia CWI-2 KOI8 MIK Iran System
IBM AIX code pages	367 371 806 813 819 895 896 912 913 914 915 916 919 920 921/901 922/902 923 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 963 964 965 970 971 1004 1006 1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1029 1036 1089 1111 1124 1129/1163 1133 1350 1382 1383
IBM Apple MacIntosh emulations	1275 1280 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286
IBM Adobe emulations	1038 1276 1277
IBM DEC emulations	1020 1021 1023 1090 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1287 1288
IBM HP emulations	1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058
Windows code pages	CER-GS 874/1162 (TIS-620) 932/943 (Shift JIS) 936/1386 (GBK) 950/1370 (Big5) 949/1363 (EUC-KR) 1169 1174 Extended Latin-8 1200 (UTF-16LE) 1201 (UTF-16BE) 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1261 1270 54936 (GB18030)
EBCDIC code pages	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37/1140 38 39 40 251 252 254 256 257 258 259 260 264 273/1141 274 275 276 277/1142 278/1143 279 280/1144 281 282 283 284/1145 285/1146 286 287 288 289 290 293 297/1147 298 300 310 320 321 322 330 351 352 353 355 357 358 359 360 361 363 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 410 420/16804 421 423 424/8616/12712 425 435 500/1148 803 829 833 834 835 836 837 838/838 839 870/1110/1153 871/1149 875/4971/9067 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 892 893 905 918 924 930/1390 931 933/1364 935/1388 937/1371 939/1399 1001 1002 1003 1005 1007 1024 1025/1154 1026/1155 1027 1028 1030 1031 1032 1033 1037 1047 1068 1069 1070 1071 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085 1087 1091 1097 1112/1156 1113 1122/1157 1123/1158 1130/1164 1132 1136 1137 1150 1151 1152 1159 1165 1166 1278 1279 1303 1364 1376 1377 JEF KEIS
Platform specific	Acorn Adobe Standard Apple II ATASCII Atari ST BICS Casio calculators CDC CPC DEC Radix-50 DEC MCS/NRCS DG International ELWRO-Junior FIELDATA GEM GEOS GSM 03.38 HP Roman Extension HP Roman-8 HP Roman-9 HP calculators LICS LMBCS MSX NEC APC NeXT PCW PETSCII Sharp calculators TI calculators TRS-80 Ventura International Ventura Symbol WISCII XCCS ZX80 ZX81 ZX Spectrum
Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646	UTF-1 UTF-7 UTF-8 UTF-16 (UTF-16LE/UTF-16BE) / UCS-2 UTF-32 (UTF-32LE/UTF-32BE) / UCS-4 UTF-EBCDIC GB 18030 BOCU-1 CESU-8 SCSU
Miscellaneous code pages	ABICOMP APL ARIB STD-B24 Cork HZ INIS INIS-8 Johab LY1 OML OMS OT1 SEASCII TACE16 TRON UTF-5 UTF-6 WTF-8
Related topics	Code page Control character (C0 C1) CCSID Character encodings in HTML Charset detection Han unification Hardware ISO 6429/IEC 6429/ANSI X3.64 Mojibake
Character sets

Standards of Ecma International
Application interfaces	ANSI escape code Common Language Infrastructure Office Open XML OpenXPS
File systems (tape)	Advanced Intelligent Tape DDS DLT Super DLT Holographic Versatile Disc Linear Tape-Open (Ultrium-1) VXA
File systems (disk)	CD-ROM CD File System (CDFS) FAT FAT12 FAT16 FAT16B FD UDF Ultra Density Optical Universal Media Disc
Graphics	Universal 3D
Programming languages	C++/CLI C# Eiffel JavaScript (E4X, ECMAScript)
Radio link interfaces	NFC UWB
Other	ECMA-35
List of Ecma standards (1961 - Present)

ISO standards by standard number
List of ISO standards / ISO romanizations / IEC standards
1–9999	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 16 31 -0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 128 216 217 226 228 233 259 269 302 306 428 518 519 639 -1 -2 -3 -5 -6 646 690 732 764 843 898 965 1000 1004 1007 1073-1 1413 1538 1745 1989 2014 2015 2022 2047 2108 2145 2146 2240 2281 2709 2711 2788 2852 3029 3103 3166 -1 -2 -3 3297 3307 3602 3864 3901 3977 4031 4157 4217 4909 5218 5428 5775 5776 5800 5964 6166 6344 6346 6385 6425 6429 6438 6523 6709 7001 7002 7098 7185 7200 7498 7736 7810 7811 7812 7813 7816 8000 8178 8217 8571 8583 8601 8632 8652 8691 8807 8820-5 8859 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -8-I -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16 8879 9000/9001 9075 9126 9293 9241 9362 9407 9506 9529 9564 9594 9660 9897 9899 9945 9984 9985 9995
10000–19999	10005 10006 10007 10116 10118-3 10160 10161 10165 10179 10206 10218 10303 -11 -21 -22 -28 -238 10383 10487 10585 10589 10646 10664 10746 10861 10957 10962 10967 11073 11170 11179 11404 11544 11783 11784 11785 11801 11898 11940 (-2) 11941 11941 (TR) 11992 12006 12182 12207 12234-2 13211 -1 -2 13216 13250 13399 13406-2 13450 13485 13490 13567 13568 13584 13616 14000 14031 14224 14289 14396 14443 14496 -2 -3 -6 -10 -11 -12 -14 -17 -20 14644 14649 14651 14698 14750 14764 14882 14971 15022 15189 15288 15291 15292 15398 15408 15444 -3 15445 15438 15504 15511 15686 15693 15706 -2 15707 15897 15919 15924 15926 15926 WIP 15930 16023 16262 16612-2 16750 16949 (TS) 17024 17025 17100 17203 17369 17442 17799 18000 18004 18014 18245 18629 18916 19005 19011 19092 (-1 -2) 19114 19115 19125 19136 19439 19500 19501 19502 19503 19505 19506 19507 19508 19509 19510 19600:2014 19752 19757 19770 19775-1 19794-5 19831
20000+	20000 20022 20121 20400 21000 21047 21500 21827:2002 22000 23270 23271 23360 24517 24613 24617 24707 25178 25964 26000 26300 26324 27000 series 27000 27001:2005 27001:2013 27002 27006 27729 28000 29110 29148 29199-2 29500 30170 31000 32000 38500 40500 42010 55000 80000 -1 -2 -3
Category

List of International Electrotechnical Commission standards
IEC standards	IEC 60027 IEC 60034 IEC 60038 IEC 60062 IEC 60063 IEC 60068 IEC 60112 IEC 60228 IEC 60269 IEC 60297 IEC 60309 IEC 60320 IEC 60364 IEC 60446 IEC 60559 IEC 60601 IEC 60870 IEC 60870-5 IEC 60870-6 IEC 60906-1 IEC 60908 IEC 60929 IEC 60958 AES3 S/PDIF IEC 61030 IEC 61131 IEC 61131-3 IEC 61158 IEC 61162 IEC 61334 IEC 61346 IEC 61355 IEC 61400 IEC 61499 IEC 61508 IEC 61511 IEC 61850 IEC 61883 IEC 61960 IEC 61968 IEC 61970 IEC 62014-4 IEC 62056 IEC 62061 IEC 62196 IEC 62262 IEC 62264 IEC 62304 IEC 62325 IEC 62351 IEC 62365 IEC 62366 IEC 62379 IEC 62386 IEC 62455 IEC 62680 IEC 62682 IEC 62700
ISO/IEC standards	ISO/IEC 646 ISO/IEC 2022 ISO/IEC 5218 ISO/IEC 6429 ISO/IEC 6523 ISO/IEC 7810 ISO/IEC 7811 ISO/IEC 7812 ISO/IEC 7813 ISO/IEC 7816 ISO/IEC 7942 ISO/IEC 8613 ISO/IEC 8632 ISO/IEC 8652 ISO/IEC 8859 ISO/IEC 9126 ISO/IEC 9293 ISO/IEC 9592 ISO/IEC 9593 ISO/IEC 9899 ISO/IEC 9945 ISO/IEC 9995 ISO/IEC 10021 ISO/IEC 10116 ISO/IEC 10165 ISO/IEC 10179 ISO/IEC 10646 ISO/IEC 10967 ISO/IEC 11172 ISO/IEC 11179 ISO/IEC 11404 ISO/IEC 11544 ISO/IEC 11801 ISO/IEC 12207 ISO/IEC 13250 ISO/IEC 13346 ISO/IEC 13522-5 ISO/IEC 13568 ISO/IEC 13818 ISO/IEC 14443 ISO/IEC 14496 ISO/IEC 14882 ISO/IEC 15288 ISO/IEC 15291 ISO/IEC 15408 ISO/IEC 15444 ISO/IEC 15445 ISO/IEC 15504 ISO/IEC 15511 ISO/IEC 15693 ISO/IEC 16262 ISO/IEC 17024 ISO/IEC 17025 ISO/IEC 18000 ISO/IEC 18004 ISO/IEC 18014 ISO/IEC 19752 ISO/IEC 19757 ISO/IEC 19770 ISO/IEC 19788 ISO/IEC 20000 ISO/IEC 21000 ISO/IEC 21827 ISO/IEC 23003 ISO/IEC 23270 ISO/IEC 23360 ISO/IEC 24707 ISO/IEC 24727 ISO/IEC 24744 ISO/IEC 26300 ISO/IEC 27000 ISO/IEC 27000-series ISO/IEC 27002 ISO/IEC 27040 ISO/IEC 29119 ISO/IEC 33001 ISO/IEC 42010 ISO/IEC 80000 ISO/IEC 38500 ISO/IEC 4909
Related	International Electrotechnical Commission

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