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I am using ANSI escape codes in a shell script to colorize some parts of a string. For example, here I add the text NOTE with a red background color at the end of $var: $ var='test' $ echo $var'...
#1: Initial revision
by
Trevor
·
2025-04-27T01:02:57Z (about 23 hours ago)
how to apply ANSI escape codes when a backslash precedes the escape code
I am using [ANSI escape codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code) in a shell script to colorize some parts of a string. For example, here I add the text `NOTE` with a red background color at the end of `$var`: ```shell $ var='test' $ echo $var'\e[41mNOTE\e[0m' ```  This works as intended. However, if `$var` has a backslash at the end, this technique won't work because the backslash at the end of `$var` and at the beginning of the first escape code are joined together to form `\\`, which is interpreted as a single backslash character: ```shell $ var='test\' $ echo $var'\e[41mNOTE\e[0m' ```  The variable `$var` is obtained from lines of various files, and widely varies. So ideally, I am looking for a solution that does not require checking the last character of `$var`.