Stylify

A small command-line tool for styling terminal text with colors and text effects using ANSI escape codes.

Disclaimer: This is a learning project, not an official or production-grade project. That is why the program is kept simple: it only styles text in the terminal. Logic mistakes or design flaws are quite possible, so please use it with that in mind. Feedback and suggestions are welcome 😁.

Features

• Set the foreground (text) color
• Set the background color
• Bold, italic, and underline effects
• Clear error messages with hints
• Built-in --help and --version

Requirements

• A C++20 compatible compiler (GCC 10+, Clang 11+, or MSVC 2019 16.11+)
• CMake 3.20 or newer
• Git
• A terminal that supports ANSI escape codes (most Linux/macOS terminals, Windows Terminal, and Windows 10+ consoles)

Build and install

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/arahmanp/stylify
cd stylify

2. Generate the build files

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

3. Build

cmake --build build --config Release

The binary will be created in the build folder (build/stylify on Linux/macOS, or build\Release\stylify.exe on Windows with Visual Studio).

4. Copy the binary to your PATH

Linux/macOS

sudo cp build/stylify /usr/local/bin/

Windows (PowerShell)

Copy stylify.exe to a folder that is already in your PATH, or create one and add it to PATH:

mkdir $env:USERPROFILE\bin
copy build\Release\stylify.exe $env:USERPROFILE\bin\

Then add %USERPROFILE%\bin to your PATH environment variable and restart your terminal.

After that, verify the installation:

stylify --version

Usage

stylify [OPTIONS] <text>
stylify [OPTIONS] --text <text>

The text can be passed directly as an argument or with --text. Only one text is allowed, so wrap text containing spaces in quotes.

Options

Option	Description
--fg-color <color>	Set the text (foreground) color
--bg-color <color>	Set the background color
--bold	Make the text bold
--italic	Make the text italic
--underline	Underline the text
--text <text>	Provide the text to style
--version	Show version information
--help	Show the help message

Available colors

black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white

Examples

# Red, bold text
stylify "Hello" --fg-color red --bold

# Underlined text on a blue background
stylify --text "Hello World" --bg-color blue --underline

# Combine everything
stylify "Hi" --fg-color white --bg-color magenta --italic --underline

Because Stylify prints the styled text followed by a newline, it can be used inside shell scripts:

echo "Status: $(stylify OK --fg-color green --bold)"

Errors and warnings

Errors and warnings are printed to stderr, with a hint when one is available. An error stops the program with exit code 1.

Errors

• No arguments provided
• Unknown flag or unknown color
• A flag that needs a value is missing it (--fg-color, --bg-color, --text)
• A color, effect flag, or text is given more than once
• No text provided

Warnings

• The provided text is empty
• No style options were given, so the text is printed unchanged

Example:

$ stylify "hi" --fg-color pink
error: Unknown color `pink`.
  hint: Available colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white.

Notes

• A text that starts with -- is treated as a flag. To style such text, use --text, for example stylify --text "--5 degrees".
• Colors are displayed according to your terminal theme. For example, black text may be hard to read on a dark background.

Version

Stylify 0.1.0

Author

Andhika Rahman