How does one output bold text in BASH?

Question

I'm writing a bash script that prints some text to the screen:

echo "Some Text"

Can I format the text? I would like to make it bold.

Thank you.

Answer 1

In theory like so: http://unstableme.blogspot.com/2008/01/ansi-escape-sequences-for-writing-text.html But in practice it may be interpreted as "high intensity" color instead.

Answer 2

echo -e "\033[1mThis should be bold text.\033[0m"

Answer 3

I assume bash is running on a vt100-compatible terminal in which the user did not explicitly turn off the support for formatting.

First, turn on support for special characters in echo, using -e option. Later, use ansi escape sequence ESC[1m, like:

echo -e "\033[1mSome Text"

More on ansi escape sequences for example here: ascii-table.com/ansi-escape-sequences-vt-100.php

Answer 4

The most compatible way of doing this is usingi tput to discover the right sequences to send to the terminal:

bold=`tput bold`
normal=`tput sgr0`

then you can use the variables $bold and $normal to format things:

echo "this is ${bold}bold${normal} but this isn't"

gives

this is bold but this isn't