By default, grep does not highlight the keyword or the search term. Making grep highlighting the search term can make the visibility of the keyword more obvious if it hide in between the words.
The parameter for grep to highlight the keyword is “–color“.
#start of somefile the big brown fox jumped over the lazy dog the big brown dog jumped over the lazy fox the brown fox jumped over the big lazy dog #end of somefile
e.g.
grep --color -i dog somefile
would display :
the big brown fox jumped over the lazy dog the big brown dog jumped over the lazy fox the brown fox jumped over the big lazy dog
To make the highlight feature permanent, do an alias in .bash_profile or .bashrc :
alias grep='grep --color'
Additionally, to change the color of grep, set the term variable GREP_COLOR to the respective color by using “export“.
e.g.
For red wordings, set :
export GREP_COLOR=31
To make the color permanent, put it into .bashrc or .bash_profile.
As for other colors, refer to the below escape sequence :
Standard Attributes
0 Reset all attributes 1 Bright 2 Dim 4 Underscore 5 Blink 7 Reverse 8 Hidden
Foreground Colours
30 Black 31 Red 32 Green 33 Yellow 34 Blue 35 Magenta 36 Cyan 37 White
Background Colours
40 Black 41 Red 42 Green 43 Yellow 44 Blue 45 Magenta 46 Cyan 47 White
Adiós !!!
