this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Is there an easy way to filter all terminal commands that contain a --help flag? (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by j4k3@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Or is there maybe a way to set the pager for all help related queries to some command? I'm using bat and would like to pipe all --help through | bat --language=help by default for the syntax highlighting and colored output... Or if you know a lower effort way to color the output of --help let me know.

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[–] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

No

I wasn't intending to come off confrontational, I apologize for that. I was looking at this from it sounding like you wanted any command on a system. I did find that you can colorize man. see script below for an example. As for busybox, it is a small project, so colorizing just it would be relatively easy and easy to add as a patch to a system. Not sure if that would upstream though as it is intended to work well on low memory systems among others.

#!/bin/bash

export PAGER="less -r"
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[01;31m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[01;32m'

man ls

Edit: it does seem that this man colorization is disabled by default.

Edit2: "export MANROFFOPT=-c" can replace "export GROFF_NO_SGR=1" to limit just man.

Edit3: source Arch Linux bbs

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I use alias man='batman --pager="less -RF" for colorized manpages on my workstation, but I'll save this for sure. It might be handy on smaller embedded systems.

I wonder why colorizing manpages like this is not default in most distros. That seems like an obvious thing to configure for end user's quality of life.

[–] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I wonder why colorizing manpages like this is not default in most distros. That seems like an obvious thing to configure for end user’s quality of life.

My best guess would be that each terminal could display differently or be buggy and a "lowest common denominator" approach where it work everywhere. I know blue tends to be to dark unless I change the color to a lighter shade and the font could make a difference as well.