How do I use bold font in terminal? (echo/cat)

Solution 1:

Here's how:

echo -e "text \033[1mbold\033[0m text"

See "Colorizing" Scripts tutorial.

It's not possible to do for cat that way. cat will merely print the characters of the file onto standard out. The closest thing I can come up with is the following:

If you put text \033[1mbold\033[0m text you can do

echo -e `cat test.txt`

Solution 2:

Also checkout tput(1). Based on ncurses(3) which is a system abstraction for terminal manipulation (i.e. its purpose is to bring an API which works independent of architecture, OS, terminal, tty, etc.).

Example:

echo "$(tput bold)AHHH$(tput sgr0)"

Hehe, asked 10 years ago; I'm too useful.