acoc: More filter-based colorizing for the terminal

I had some personal issues that needed attention yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to post anything. I’ll make up for it today though; here’s acoc to start us off right.

My “week” of output colorizers never really ends. 😉 acoc works in a similar fashion to colorwrapper and rainbow, by using command-specific filters to predict and assign color to a program’s output.

That means acoc has specific programs that it knows how to colorize. It’s not a grep-ish tool like colorex; instead it’s looking for specific output from specific programs. In some cases that’s prefereable, in others it’s not. It will depend on what you need a colorizing tool for.

Right now, acoc’s list of recognized commands is somewhat small. There are about 30 here, and perhaps six to eight of those are distro-specific. There’s also an added complication that some of the commands don’t seem to produce any color with acoc, which might mean it’s looking for something different from what my Arch system can produce.

acoc allows for custom filters, and the syntax appears to be fairly straightforward. So if there’s something that you need and acoc doesn’t support it out-of-the-box, you can build it in a few minutes.

Altogether, acoc reminds me of colour more than anything, since it too will probably require a little attention before it meets all your needs. acoc definitely has more filters available by default, but still not as many as colorwrapper.

Now let’s see if I can find something that’s not a text colorization tool. …