Home

Welcome to the hl wiki !

hl is a simple command that colorizes strings with basic terminal colors according to regular expressions. It can be used to highlight log files, configuration files, output of various commands, and so on. It is also helpful to locate useful informations in a screen full of text. hl can handle 42 colors. Thanks to configuration files, the syntax of the hl command is considerably simplified.

hl is a command that can colorize texts such as text files, log files, or command outputs. To use it on your system, you need to download the source files :

$ git clone https://github.com/mbornet-hl/hl

then compile them :

$ cd hl
$ make clean; make

You should get a result like the following one :

rm -f hl src/hl src/*.o
cd src; make
cc    -c -o cr_main.o cr_main.c
cc    -c -o cr_gpri.o cr_gpri.c
lex  -t cr_lex.l > cr_lex.c
cc    -c -o cr_lex.o cr_lex.c
./hl: version 1.92
rm cr_lex.c
mv src/hl .
./hl -V
./hl: version 1.92
make: [hl] Error 1 (ignored)

The generated hl file contains the executable binary file. On Linux, you can check the file type with the following command :

$ file hl

and the result should look like :

hl: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.26, BuildID[sha1]=0x5f54d27c095ef7fabb9b19279f73c40cae1e6650, stripped

On macOS, you should get something like :

hl: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

Once you have got your hl executable, you can copy it into a directory which is in your PATH environment variable, for example :

# cp hl /usr/local/bin

or :

$ cp hl $HOME/bin

You can check you can access the command with :

$ hl -V

and it should display the command's version, like :

hl: version 1.92

Then you can copy configuration files in their own directories :

# cp config_files/hl /etc/default

and :

$ cp config_files/.hl.cfg $HOME

or copy the files from the config_files directory to any place you want on your system, as long as you define the environment variables HL_CONF and HL_CONF_GLOB to describe your configuration environment, for example :

export HL_CONF='/DATA3/projets/hl/config_files:/home/machine/mb:/etc/default/hl'
export HL_CONF_GLOB='hl_*.cfg:hl.cfg:.hl_*.cfg:.hl.cfg:hl_*.config'

Once this is done, you can use the configurations defined in the configuration files, by simply placing their name after a double dash, like :

$  xxd hl | hl --xxd

You can test your own regular expressions using the options on the command line, like :

$ echo "starting / stopping" | hl -ei -3g '(start(ing|ed))' -2r '(stop(ping|ped))'

and once you have got a set of options that suits your needs, you can create a configuration in your $HOME/.cfg file to simplify your command line options.

If you understand french, you can read the following item : https://connect.ed-diamond.com/Linux-Pratique/LP-093/Colorisez-vos-textes-avec-la-commande-hl

Man pages displayed by the man command can be colorized using the script hl_man as a pager. For example, you can set the MANPAGER variable like this :

$ export MANPAGER='/usr/local/bin/hl_man'

then use the man command as usual.

You have several ways to list configurations :

1. with hl -H, you will only have a list of the configuration, such as :

  Configurations :
    --C
    --dmidecode
    --show_disks
    --show_all_disks
    --sccs
    --acl
    --apt-get
    --jigdo
    --ll
    --ls_doc
    --man
    ...

2. with hl -vH, you will have a list of options preceeded by the name of the configuration file in which the configuration is defined, such as :

  Configurations :
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_C.cfg                  : C
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_HW.cfg                 : dmidecode
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_HW.cfg                 : show_disks
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_HW.cfg                 : show_all_disks
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_SCCS.cfg               : sccs
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_acl.cfg                : acl
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_cmds.cfg               : apt-get
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_cmds.cfg               : jigdo
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_cmds.cfg               : ll
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_cmds.cfg               : ls_doc
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_cmds.cfg               : man
...

3. with hl -vvH, you will also have the details of each configuration :

  Configurations :
/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_C.cfg                  : C
      -e
      -%c   '/\*'
      -.    '\*/'
      -g    '\<(void|bool|char|int|long|unsigned|float|double|struct|enum)\>'
      -y    '\<(sizeof|switch|case|default|for|while|if|else|[0-9]|stderr|stdout)\>'
      -m    '(\\n|\\r|\\b)'
      -y    '".*"'
      -m    '^[ 	]*#[a-zA-Z]+'
      -y    '^[ 	]*#include[ 	]+(<.*>|".*")'

/home/machine/mb/hl_conf/hl_HW.cfg                 : dmidecode
      -e
      -1B   '^#.*'
      -3g   '^Handle .+'
      -2B   '^[^ 	].+'
      -3b   'Manufacturer:'
      -3y   'Manufacturer: *(.+)'
...

Now, you can define your own configurations using simple text strings or regular expressions and boldly go where no developer has gone before !