How to colorize the output of grep

Grep is a very useful Linux command. In short grep searches an input stream for a pattern and displays the results. In this guide I will show you how to colorize the output of grep by highlighting the pattern you were searching for.

Supposing that you are using the bash shell open ~/.bashrc with your favorite text editor:

gedit ~/.bashrc

and paste the following line:

alias grep="grep --color=auto"

Now open a new terminal (or source ~/.bashrc) and try the grep command. This is how the default and colorized grep look like:

Of course you can change those colors. In ~/.bashrc to change the foreground color paste the following line:

export GREP_COLOR="1;37"

or to change bot foreground and background

export GREP_COLOR="1;37;42"

Here is the output of grep.

The first number indicates that we want the font to be bold. The second one is the foreground (the text's) color, and the third one is the background color. Here is a list with the color numbers of the shell.

Color
                        
Foreground
                        
Background
                        
Black
                        
30
                        
40
                        
Red
                        
31
                        
41
                        
Green
                        
32
                        
42
                        
Yellow
                        
33
                        
43
                        
Blue
                        
34
                        
44
                        
Magenta
                        
35
                        
45
                        
Cyan
                        
36
                        
46
                        
White
                        
37
                        
47