been wanting to know how to print fancy colors in shell scripts for about as long as I've seen Linux in use. I finally spent the time to figure it out. :) mind you, this is bash 2.05; not guaranteed to work anything like the same way, anywhere else. here's an example script: #!/bin/bash COLORS='\n \e[1mBold Text\e[m\n \e[4mUnderline Text\e[m\n \e[5mBlink Text\e[m\n \e[7mInverse Text\e[m\n Should be normal text \n Foreground colors: \e[0;30m30: Black\n \e[0;31m31: Red\n \e[0;32m32: Green\n \e[0;33m33: Yellow\Orange\n \e[0;34m34: Blue\n \e[0;35m35: Magenta\n \e[0;36m36: Cyan\n \e[0;37m37: Light Gray\Black\n \e[0;39m39: Default\n Bright foreground colors: \n \e[1;30m30: Dark Gray\n \e[1;31m31: Red\n \e[1;32m32: Green\n \e[1;33m33: Yellow\n \e[1;34m34: Blue\n \e[1;35m35: Magenta\n \e[1;36m36: Cyan\n \e[1;37m37: White\n \e[0;39m39: Default\n \e[mBackground colors: \n \e[40m40: Black\e[0;49m\n \e[41m41: Red\e[0;49m\n \e[42m42: Green\e[0;49m\n \e[43m43: Yellow\Orange\e[0;49m\n \e[44m44: Blue\e[0;49m\n \e[45m45: Magenta\e[0;49m\n \e[46m46: Cyan\e[0;49m\n \e[47m47: Light Gray\Black\e[0;49m\n \e[49m49: Default\e[m\n' echo -e $COLORS and for a command that sets brightness, text color, and background color; then resets it back to normal, try: echo -e '\e[1m\e[33m\e[44mBright Yellow on Blue!\e[m' Carl Soderstrom. -- Network Engineer Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com