Thread: Printf a coloured "space" in bash

Hello again people. I am making a bash script to show a bar graph of load averages(uptime command) TO make the bars, I want to use just coloured spaces, but for some reason it wont work. Here is what I've done.

Code:

$ a="Hello World"
$ printf "%b" "\e[1;32m$a\e[0m"
Hello World

$ a=" "
$ printf "%b" "\e[1;32m$a\e[0m"

Gives me just a space without color. What gives? Maybe I used wrong format for printf? Because I just took that syntax with the %b and substituted with my own values. Thanks a bunch.

hi,

having no sign, a space can't have colored foreground
plus, 01 is for bold, as there is no sign to be bold...

instead, color background:

Code:

printf '^[[42m%s^[[m\n' " "

where ^[ is Ctrl-V (depending on your editor)

printf is used to separate format from data

Code:

printf 'Colourd\e[42m%s\e[0mspace\n' ' '