ANSI escape code

"ANSI code" redirects here. For other uses, seeANSI (disambiguation).

ANSI escape sequencesare a standard forin-band signalingto control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on videotext terminalsandterminal emulators.Certain sequences ofbytes,most starting with anASCII escapecharacter and abracketcharacter, are embedded into text. The terminal interprets these sequences as commands, rather than text to display verbatim.

ANSI X3.64 (ISO/IEC 6429)

Output of the system-monitorhtop,an ncurses-application (which usesSGRand other ANSI/ISO control sequences).
Standard	ECMA-48 ISO/IEC6429 FIPS86 ANSIX3.64 JIS X 0211
Classification	ISO/IEC 2022basedcontrol codeand control sequence set
Other related encoding(s)	ITU T.61 ISO/IEC 8613-6 / ITU T.416 Other control function standards: ITU T.101 JIS X 0207 ISO 6630 DIN 31626 ETS 300 706

ANSI sequences were introduced in the 1970s to replace vendor-specific sequences and became widespread in the computer equipment market by the early 1980s. Although hardware text terminals have become increasingly rare in the 21st century, the relevance of the ANSI standard persists because a great majority of terminal emulators and command consoles interpret at least a portion of the ANSI standard.

History

Almost all manufacturers of video terminals added vendor-specific escape sequences to perform operations such as placing the cursor at arbitrary positions on the screen. One example is theVT52terminal, which allowed the cursor to be placed at an x,y location on the screen by sending theESCcharacter, aYcharacter, and then two characters representing numerical values equal to the x,y location plus 32 (thus starting at the ASCII space character and avoiding the control characters). TheHazeltine 1500had a similar feature, invoked using~,DC1and then the X and Y positions separated with a comma. While the two terminals had identical functionality in this regard, different control sequences had to be used to invoke them.

As these sequences were different for different terminals, elaborate libraries such astermcap( "terminal capabilities" ) and utilities such astputhad to be created so programs could use the sameAPIto work with any terminal. In addition, many of these terminals required sending numbers (such as row and column) as the binary values of the characters; for some programming languages, and for systems that did not use ASCII internally, it was often difficult to turn a number into the correct character.

The ANSI standard attempted to address these problems by making a command set that all terminals would use and requiring all numeric information to be transmitted as ASCII numbers. The first standard in the series was ECMA-48, adopted in 1976.It was a continuation of a series of character coding standards, the first one beingECMA-6from 1965, a 7-bit standard from whichISO 646originates. The name "ANSI escape sequence" dates from 1979 whenANSIadopted ANSI X3.64. The ANSI X3L2 committee collaborated with theECMAcommittee TC 1 to produce nearly identical standards. These two standards were merged into an international standard, ISO 6429.In 1994, ANSI withdrew its standard in favor of the international standard.

The DEC VT100 video display terminal.

The first popular video terminal to support these sequences was theDigitalVT100,introduced in 1978.This model was very successful in the market, which sparked a variety of VT100 clones, among the earliest and most popular of which was the much more affordableZenith Z-19in 1979.Others included theQumeQVT-108,TelevideoTVI-970,WyseWY-99GT as well as optional "VT100" or "VT103" or "ANSI" modes with varying degrees of compatibility on many other brands. The popularity of these gradually led to more and more software (especiallybulletin board systemsand otheronline services) assuming the escape sequences worked, leading to almost all new terminals and emulator programs supporting them.

In 1981, ANSI X3.64 was adopted for use in the US government byFIPSpublication 86. Later, the US government stopped duplicating industry standards, so FIPS pub. 86 was withdrawn.

ECMA-48 has been updated several times and is currently at its 5th edition, from 1991. It is also adopted byISOandIECas standardISO/IEC 6429.A version is adopted as aJapanese Industrial Standard,asJIS X 0211.

Related standards includeITU T.61,theTeletexstandard, and theISO/IEC 8613,theOpen Document Architecturestandard (mainly ISO/IEC 8613-6 or ITU T.416). The two systems share many escape codes with the ANSI system, with extensions that are not necessarily meaningful to computer terminals. Both systems quickly fell into disuse, but ECMA-48 does mark the extensions used in them as reserved.

Platform support

The Xterm terminal emulator.

In the early 1980s, large amounts of software directly used these sequences to update screen displays. This included everything onVMS(which assumed DEC terminals), most software designed to be portable onCP/Mhome computers, and even lots of Unix software as it was easier to use than the termcap libraries, such as the shell script examples below in this article.

Terminal emulatorsfor communicating with remote machines almost always implement ANSI escape codes. This includes anything written to communicate with bulletin-board systems on home and personal computers. On Unix terminal emulators such asxtermalso can communicate with software running on the same machine, and thus software running in X11 under a terminal emulator could assume the ability to write these sequences.

As computers got more powerful even built-in displays started supporting them, allowing software to be portable between CP/M systems. There were attempts to extend the escape sequences to support printersand as an early PDF-like document storage format, theOpen Document Architecture.

DOS and Windows

The IBM PC, introduced in 1983, did not support these or any other escape sequences for updating the screen. Only a fewcontrol characters(BEL,CR,LF,BS) were interpreted by the underlying BIOS. Any display effects had to be done with BIOS calls, which were notoriously slow, or by directly manipulating the IBM PC hardware. This made any interesting software non-portable and led to the need to duplicate details of the display hardware inPC Clones.

DOS version 2.0 included an optionaldevice drivernamedANSI.SYS.Poor performance, and the fact that it was not installed by default, meant software rarely (if ever) took advantage of it.

TheWindows Consoledid not support ANSI escape sequences, nor did Microsoft provide any method to enable them. Some replacements such as JP Software'sTCC(formerly 4NT), Michael J. Mefford's ANSI.COM, Jason Hood'sANSICONand Maximus5'sConEmuenabled ANSI escape sequences. Software such as the Python colorama packageorCygwinmodified text in-process as it was sent to the console, extracting the ANSI Escape sequences and emulating them with Windows calls.

In 2016, Microsoft released theWindows 10version 1511update which unexpectedly implemented support for ANSI escape sequences, over three decades after the debut of Windows.This was done alongsideWindows Subsystem for Linux,apparently to allowUnix-liketerminal-based software to use the Windows Console. Windows PowerShell 5.1 enabled this by default, and PowerShell 6 made it possible to embed the necessary ESC character into a string with`e.

Windows Terminal,introduced in 2019, supports the sequences by default, and Microsoft intends to replace the Windows Console with Windows Terminal.

C0 control codes

Almost all users assume some functions of some single-byte characters. Initially defined as part of ASCII, the default C0 control code set is now defined in ISO 6429 (ECMA-48), making it part of the same standard as the C1 set invoked by the ANSI escape sequences (althoughISO 2022allows the ISO 6429 C0 set to be used without the ISO 6429 C1 set, andvice versa,provided that 0x1B is always ESC). This is used to shorten the amount of data transmitted, or to perform some functions that are unavailable from escape sequences:

Popular C0 control codes (not an exhaustive list)

^	C0	Abbr	Name	Effect
^G	0x07	BEL	Bell	Makes an audible noise.
^H	0x08	BS	Backspace	Moves the cursor left (but may "backwards wrap" if cursor is at start of line).
^I	0x09	HT	Tab	Moves the cursor right to next tab stop.
^J	0x0A	LF	Line Feed	Moves to next line, scrolls the display up if at bottom of the screen. Usually does not move horizontally, though programs should not rely on this.
^L	0x0C	FF	Form Feed	Move a printer to top of next page. Usually does not move horizontally, though programs should not rely on this. Effect on video terminals varies.
^M	0x0D	CR	Carriage Return	Moves the cursor to column zero.
^[	0x1B	ESC	Escape	Starts all the escape sequences

Escape sequences vary in length. The general format for an ANSI-compliant escape sequence is defined byANSI X3.41(equivalent to ECMA-35 or ISO/IEC 2022).The escape sequences consist only of bytes in the range0x20—0x7F(all the non-control ASCII characters), and can be parsed without looking ahead. The behavior when a control character, a byte with the high bit set, or a byte that is not part of any valid sequence, is encountered before the end is undefined.

Fe Escape sequences

If theESCis followed by a byte in the range 0x40 to 0x5F, the escape sequence is of typeFe.Its interpretation is delegated to the applicableC1 control codestandard.Accordingly, all escape sequences corresponding to C1 control codes from ANSI X3.64 / ECMA-48 follow this format.

The standard says that, in 8-bit environments, the control functions corresponding to typeFeescape sequences (those from the set ofC1 control codes) can be represented as single bytes in the 0x80–0x9F range.This is possible in character encodings conforming to the provisions for an 8-bit code made in ISO 2022, such as theISO 8859series. However, in character encodings used on modern devices such asUTF-8orCP-1252,those codes are often used for other purposes, so only the 2-byte sequence is typically used. In the case of UTF-8, representing a C1 control code via theC1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplementblock results in a different two-byte code (e.g.0xC2,0x8EforU+008E), but no space is saved this way.

Some typeFe(C1 set element) ANSI escape sequences (not an exhaustive list)

Code	C1	Abbr	Name	Effect
ESC N	0x8E	SS2	Single Shift Two	Select a single character from one of thealternative character sets.SS2 selects the G2 character set, and SS3 selects the G3 character set.In a 7-bit environment, this is followed by one or more GL bytes (0x20–0x7F) specifying a character from that set.In an 8-bit environment, these may instead be GR bytes (0xA0–0xFF).
ESC O	0x8F	SS3	Single Shift Three
ESC P	0x90	DCS	Device Control String	Terminated by ST.Xterm's uses of this sequence include defining User-Defined Keys, and requesting or setting Termcap/Terminfo data.
ESC [	0x9B	CSI	Control Sequence Introducer	Starts most of the useful sequences, terminated by a byte in the range 0x40 through 0x7E.
ESC \	0x9C	ST	String Terminator	Terminates strings in other controls.
ESC ]	0x9D	OSC	Operating System Command	Starts a control string for the operating system to use, terminated by ST.
ESC X	0x98	SOS	Start of String	Takes an argument of a string of text, terminated by ST.The uses for these string control sequences are defined by the applicationor privacy discipline.These functions are rarely implemented and the arguments are ignored by xterm.SomeKermitclients allow the server to automatically execute Kermit commands on the client by embedding them in APC sequences; this is a potential security risk if the server is untrusted.
ESC ^	0x9E	PM	Privacy Message
ESC _	0x9F	APC	Application Program Command

Control Sequence Introducer commands

For Control Sequence Introducer, or CSI, commands, theESC [(written as\e[or\033[in several programming languages) is followed by any number (including none) of "parameter bytes" in the range 0x30–0x3F (ASCII0–9:;<=>?), then by any number of "intermediate bytes" in the range 0x20–0x2F (ASCII space and!"#$%&'()*+,-./), then finally by a single "final byte" in the range 0x40–0x7E (ASCII@A–Z[\]^_`a–z{|}~).

All common sequences just use the parameters as a series of semicolon-separated numbers such as1;2;3.Missing numbers are treated as0(1;;3acts like the middle number is0,and no parameters at all inESC[macts like a0reset code). Some sequences (such as CUU) treat0as1in order to make missing parameters useful.

A subset of arrangements was declared "private" so that terminal manufacturers could insert their own sequences without conflicting with the standard. Sequences containing the parameter bytes<=>?or the final bytes 0x70–0x7E (p–z{|}~) are private.

The behavior of the terminal is undefined in the case where a CSI sequence contains any character outside of the range 0x20–0x7E. These illegal characters are either C0 control characters (the range 0–0x1F), DEL (0x7F), or bytes with the high bit set. Possible responses are to ignore the byte, to process it immediately, and furthermore whether to continue with the CSI sequence, to abort it immediately, or to ignore the rest of it.

Some ANSI control sequences (not an exhaustive list)

Code	Abbr	Name	Effect
CSInA	CUU	Cursor Up	Moves the cursorn(default1) cells in the given direction. If the cursor is already at the edge of the screen, this has no effect.
CSInB	CUD	Cursor Down
CSInC	CUF	Cursor Forward
CSInD	CUB	Cursor Back
CSInE	CNL	Cursor Next Line	Moves cursor to beginning of the linen(default1) lines down. (notANSI.SYS)
CSInF	CPL	Cursor Previous Line	Moves cursor to beginning of the linen(default1) lines up. (notANSI.SYS)
CSInG	CHA	Cursor Horizontal Absolute	Moves the cursor to columnn(default1). (notANSI.SYS)
CSIn;mH	CUP	Cursor Position	Moves the cursor to rown,columnm.The values are 1-based, and default to1(top left corner) if omitted. A sequence such asCSI;5His a synonym forCSI 1;5Has well asCSI 17;His the same asCSI 17HandCSI 17;1H
CSInJ	ED	Erase in Display	Clears part of the screen. Ifnis0(or missing), clear from cursor to end of screen. Ifnis1,clear from cursor to beginning of the screen. Ifnis2,clear entire screen (and moves cursor to upper left on DOSANSI.SYS). Ifnis3,clear entire screen and delete all lines saved in the scrollback buffer (this feature was added forxtermand is supported by other terminal applications).
CSInK	EL	Erase in Line	Erases part of the line. Ifnis0(or missing), clear from cursor to the end of the line. Ifnis1,clear from cursor to beginning of the line. Ifnis2,clear entire line. Cursor position does not change.
CSInS	SU	Scroll Up	Scroll whole page up byn(default1) lines. New lines are added at the bottom. (notANSI.SYS)
CSInT	SD	Scroll Down	Scroll whole page down byn(default1) lines. New lines are added at the top. (notANSI.SYS)
CSIn;mf	HVP	Horizontal Vertical Position	Same as CUP, but counts as a format effector function (likeCRorLF) rather than an editor function (like CUD or CNL). This can lead to different handling in certain terminal modes.
CSInm	SGR	Select Graphic Rendition	Sets colors and style of the characters following this code
CSI 5i		AUX Port On	Enable aux serial port usually for local serial printer
CSI 4i		AUX Port Off	Disable aux serial port usually for local serial printer
CSI 6n	DSR	Device Status Report	Reports the cursor position (CPR) by transmittingESC[n;mR,wherenis the row andmis the column.

Some popular private sequences

Code	Abbr	Name	Effect
CSI s	SCP, SCOSC	Save Current Cursor Position	Saves the cursor position/state in SCO console mode.In vertical split screen mode, instead used to set (asCSIn;ns) or reset left and right margins.
CSI u	RCP, SCORC	Restore Saved Cursor Position	Restores the cursor position/state in SCO console mode.
CSI? 25 h	DECTCEM		Shows the cursor, from theVT220.
CSI? 25 l	DECTCEM		Hides the cursor.
CSI? 1004 h			Enable reporting focus. Reports whenever terminal emulator enters or exits focus asESC [IandESC [O,respectively.
CSI? 1004 l			Disable reporting focus.
CSI? 1049 h			Enable alternative screen buffer, from xterm
CSI? 1049 l			Disable alternative screen buffer, from xterm
CSI? 2004 h			Turn on bracketed paste mode.In bracketed paste mode, text pasted into the terminal will be surrounded byESC [200~andESC [201~;programs running in the terminal should not treat characters bracketed by those sequences as commands (Vim,for example, does not treat them as commands).From xterm
CSI? 2004 l			Turn off bracketed paste mode.

Select Graphic Rendition parameters

The control sequenceCSInm,named Select Graphic Rendition (SGR), sets display attributes. Several attributes can be set in the same sequence, separated by semicolons.Each display attribute remains in effect until a following occurrence of SGR resets it.If no codes are given,CSI mis treated asCSI 0 m(reset / normal).

n	Name	Note
0	Resetornormal	All attributes become turned off
1	Bold or increased intensity	As with faint, the color change is a PC (SCO /CGA) invention.
2	Faint, decreased intensity,ordim	May be implemented as a lightfont weightlike bold.
3	Italic	Not widely supported. Sometimes treated as inverse or blink.
4	Underline	Style extensions exist for Kitty, VTE, mintty, iTerm2 and Konsole.
5	Slow blink	Sets blinking to less than 150 times per minute
6	Rapid blink	MS-DOS ANSI.SYS, 150+ per minute; not widely supported
7	Reverse videoorinvert	Swap foreground and background colors; inconsistent emulation
8	Concealorhide	Not widely supported.
9	Crossed-out,orstrike	Characters legible but marked as if for deletion. Not supported in Terminal.app.
10	Primary (default) font
11–19	Alternative font	Select alternative fontn− 10
20	Fraktur(Gothic)	Rarely supported
21	Doubly underlined; or: not bold	Double-underline per ECMA-48,but instead disables bold intensity on several terminals, including in theLinux kernel'sconsolebefore version 4.17.
22	Normal intensity	Neither bold nor faint; color changes where intensity is implemented as such.
23	Neither italic, nor blackletter
24	Not underlined	Neither singly nor doubly underlined
25	Not blinking	Turn blinking off
26	Proportional spacing	ITU T.61and T.416, not known to be used on terminals
27	Not reversed
28	Reveal	Not concealed
29	Not crossed out
30–37	Set foregroundcolor
38	Set foregroundcolor	Next arguments are5;nor2;r;g;b
39	Default foreground color	Implementation defined (according to standard)
40–47	Set backgroundcolor
48	Set backgroundcolor	Next arguments are5;nor2;r;g;b
49	Default background color	Implementation defined (according to standard)
50	Disable proportional spacing	T.61 and T.416
51	Framed	Implemented as "emoji variation selector"in mintty.
52	Encircled
53	Overlined	Not supported in Terminal.app
54	Neither framed nor encircled
55	Not overlined
58	Set underlinecolor	Not in standard; implemented in Kitty, VTE, mintty, and iTerm2.Next arguments are5;nor2;r;g;b.
59	Default underline color	Not in standard; implemented in Kitty, VTE, mintty, and iTerm2.
60	Ideogram underline or right side line	Rarely supported
61	Ideogram double underline,ordouble line on the right side
62	Ideogram overline or left side line
63	Ideogram double overline,ordouble line on the left side
64	Ideogram stress marking
65	No ideogram attributes	Reset the effects of all of60–64
73	Superscript	Implemented only in mintty
74	Subscript
75	Neither superscript nor subscript
90–97	Set bright foreground color	Not in standard; originally implemented by aixterm
100–107	Set bright background color

Colors

3-bit and 4-bit

The original specification only had 8 colors, and just gave them names. The SGR parameters 30–37 selected the foreground color, while 40–47 selected the background. Quite a few terminals implemented "bold" (SGR code 1) as a brighter color rather than a different font, thus providing 8 additional foreground colors. Usually you could not get these as background colors, though sometimes inverse video (SGR code 7) would allow that. Examples: to get black letters on white background useESC[30;47m,to get red useESC[31m,to get bright red useESC[1;31m.To reset colors to their defaults, useESC[39;49m(not supported on some terminals), or reset all attributes withESC[0m.Later terminals added the ability to directly specify the "bright" colors with 90–97 and 100–107.

The chart below shows a few examples of how VGA standard and modernterminal emulatorstranslate the 4-bit color codes into 24-bit color codes.

FG	BG	Name	VGA	Windows XP Console	Windows PowerShell& 1.0–6.0	Visual Studio Code	Windows 10 Console	Terminal.app	PuTTY	mIRC	xterm	Ubuntu	Eclipse Terminal
30	40	Black	0, 0, 0				12, 12, 12	0, 0, 0				1, 1, 1	0, 0, 0
31	41	Red	170, 0, 0	128, 0, 0		205, 49, 49	197, 15, 31	153, 0, 0	187, 0, 0	127, 0, 0	205, 0, 0	222, 56, 43	205, 0, 0
32	42	Green	0, 170, 0	0, 128, 0		13, 188, 121	19, 161, 14	0, 166, 0	0, 187, 0	0, 147, 0	0, 205, 0	57, 181, 74	0, 205, 0
33	43	Yellow	170, 85, 0	128, 128, 0	238, 237, 240	229, 229, 16	193, 156, 0	153, 153, 0	187, 187, 0	252, 127, 0	205, 205, 0	255, 199, 6	205, 205, 0
34	44	Blue	0, 0, 170	0, 0, 128		36, 114, 200	0, 55, 218	0, 0, 178	0, 0, 187	0, 0, 127	0, 0, 238	0, 111, 184	0, 0, 238
35	45	Magenta	170, 0, 170	128, 0, 128	1, 36, 86	188, 63, 188	136, 23, 152	178, 0, 178	187, 0, 187	156, 0, 156	205, 0, 205	118, 38, 113	205, 0, 205
36	46	Cyan	0, 170, 170	0, 128, 128		17, 168, 205	58, 150, 221	0, 166, 178	0, 187, 187	0, 147, 147	0, 205, 205	44, 181, 233	0, 205, 205
37	47	White	170, 170, 170	192, 192, 192		229, 229, 229	204, 204, 204	191, 191, 191	187, 187, 187	210, 210, 210	229, 229, 229	204, 204, 204	229, 229, 229
90	100	Bright Black (Gray)	85, 85, 85	128, 128, 128		102, 102, 102	118, 118, 118	102, 102, 102	85, 85, 85	127, 127, 127	127, 127, 127	128, 128, 128	0, 0, 0
91	101	Bright Red	255, 85, 85	255, 0, 0		241, 76, 76	231, 72, 86	230, 0, 0	255, 85, 85	255, 0, 0
92	102	Bright Green	85, 255, 85	0, 255, 0		35, 209, 139	22, 198, 12	0, 217, 0	85, 255, 85	0, 252, 0	0, 255, 0
93	103	Bright Yellow	255, 255, 85	255, 255, 0		245, 245, 67	249, 241, 165	230, 230, 0	255, 255, 85	255, 255, 0
94	104	Bright Blue	85, 85, 255	0, 0, 255		59, 142, 234	59, 120, 255	0, 0, 255	85, 85, 255	0, 0, 252	92, 92, 255	0, 0, 255	92, 92, 255
95	105	Bright Magenta	255, 85, 255	255, 0, 255		214, 112, 214	180, 0, 158	230, 0, 230	255, 85, 255	255, 0, 255
96	106	Bright Cyan	85, 255, 255	0, 255, 255		41, 184, 219	97, 214, 214	0, 230, 230	85, 255, 255	0, 255, 255
97	107	Bright White	255, 255, 255			229, 229, 229	242, 242, 242	230, 230, 230	255, 255, 255

8-bit

As256-colorlookup tables became common on graphic cards, escape sequences were added to select from a pre-defined set of 256 colors:

ESC[38;5;⟨n⟩m Select foreground color where n is a number from the table below
ESC[48;5;⟨n⟩m Select background color
0- 7: standard colors (as in ESC [ 30–37 m)
8- 15: high intensity colors (as in ESC [ 90–97 m)
16-231: 6 × 6 × 6 cube (216 colors): 16 + 36 × r + 6 × g + b (0 ≤ r, g, b ≤ 5)
232-255: grayscale from dark to light in 24 steps

TheITU's T.416 Information technology - Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architecturesuses ":" as separator characters instead:

ESC[38:5:⟨n⟩m Select foreground color where n is a number from the table below
ESC[48:5:⟨n⟩m Select background color

256-color mode — foreground: ESC[38;5;#m background: ESC[48;5;#m
Standard colors																		High-intensity colors
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
216 colors
16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51
52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70	71	72	73	74	75	76	77	78	79	80	81	82	83	84	85	86	87
88	89	90	91	92	93	94	95	96	97	98	99	100	101	102	103	104	105	106	107	108	109	110	111	112	113	114	115	116	117	118	119	120	121	122	123
124	125	126	127	128	129	130	131	132	133	134	135	136	137	138	139	140	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	151	152	153	154	155	156	157	158	159
160	161	162	163	164	165	166	167	168	169	170	171	172	173	174	175	176	177	178	179	180	181	182	183	184	185	186	187	188	189	190	191	192	193	194	195
196	197	198	199	200	201	202	203	204	205	206	207	208	209	210	211	212	213	214	215	216	217	218	219	220	221	222	223	224	225	226	227	228	229	230	231
Grayscale colors
232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255

There has also been a similar but incompatible 88-color encoding using the same escape sequence, seen inrxvtandxterm-88color.Not much is known about the scheme besides the color codes. It uses a 4×4×4 color cube.

24-bit

As "true color" graphic cards with 16 to 24 bits of color became common, applications began to support 24-bit colors. Terminal emulators supporting setting 24-bit foreground and background colors with escape sequences include Xterm,KDE'sKonsole,and iTerm, as well as all libvte based terminals,includingGNOME Terminal.

ESC[38;2;⟨r⟩;⟨g⟩;⟨b⟩m Select RGB foreground color
ESC[48;2;⟨r⟩;⟨g⟩;⟨b⟩m Select RGB background color

The syntax is likely based on theITU's T.416Open Document Architecture(ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures,which was adopted as ISO/IEC 8613-6 but ended up as a commercial failure.The ODA version is more elaborate and thus incompatible:

• The parameters after the '2' (r, g, and b) are optional and can be left empty.
• Semicolons are replaced by colons, as above.
• There is a leading "colorspace ID".The definition of the colorspace ID is not included in that specification, so it may be blank to represent the unspecified default. For CMYK color specifications, mintty interprets the colorspace ID parameter as specifying the maximum value which the channel values are given out of (e.g. 100 or 255).
• In addition to the '2' value after 48 to specify a Red-Green-Blue format (and the '5' above for a 0-255 indexed color), there are alternatives of '0' for implementation-defined and '1' for transparent - neither of which have any further parameters; '3' specifies colors using a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow scheme, and '4' for a Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black one, the latter using the position marked as "unused" for the Black component:

ESC[38:2:⟨Color-Space-ID⟩:⟨r⟩:⟨g⟩:⟨b⟩:⟨unused⟩:⟨CS tolerance⟩:⟨Color-Space associated with tolerance: 0 for "CIELUV"; 1 for "CIELAB" ⟩m Select RGB foreground color
ESC[48:2:⟨Color-Space-ID⟩:⟨r⟩:⟨g⟩:⟨b⟩:⟨unused⟩:⟨CS tolerance⟩:⟨Color-Space associated with tolerance: 0 for "CIELUV"; 1 for "CIELAB" ⟩m Select RGB background color

The ITU-RGB variation is supported by xterm, with the colorspace ID and tolerance parameters ignored. The simpler scheme using semicolons is initially found in Konsole.

Unix environment variables relating to color support

Rather than using the color support in termcap and terminfo introduced in SVr3.2 (1987),the S-Lang library (version 0.99-32, June 1996) used a separate environment variable$COLORTERMto indicate whether a terminal emulator could use colors at all, and later added values to indicate if it supported 24-bit color.This system, although poorly documented, became widespread enough for Fedora and RHEL to consider using it as a simpler and more universal detection mechanism compared to querying the now-updated libraries.

Some terminal emulators (urxvt, konsole) set$COLORFGBGto report the color scheme of the terminal (mainly light vs. dark background). This behavior originated in S-Langand is used by vim. Gnome-terminal refuses to add this behavior, as the syntax for the value is not agreed upon, the value cannot be changed upon a runtime change of the palette, and more "proper" xterm OSC 4/10/11 sequences already exist.

Operating System Command sequences

Most Operating System Command sequences were defined by Xterm, but many are also supported by other terminal emulators. For historical reasons, Xterm can end the command withBEL(0x07) as well as the standardST(0x9C or 0x1B 0x5C).For example, Xterm allows the window title to be set byESC ]0;this is the window title BEL.

A non-xterm extension is the hyperlink,ESC ]8;;link STfrom 2017, used by VTE,iTerm2,and mintty,among others.

The Linux console usesESC ] P n rr gg bbto change the palette, which, if hard-coded into an application, may hang other terminals.However, appendingSTwill be ignored by Linux and form a proper, ignorable sequence for other terminals.

Fs Escape sequences

If theESCis followed by a byte in the range0x60—0x7E,the escape sequence is of typeFs.This type is used for control functions individually registered with theISO-IRregistry.A table of these is listed underISO/IEC 2022.

Fp Escape sequences

If theESCis followed by a byte in the range0x30—0x3F,the escape sequence is of typeFp,which is set apart for up to sixteen private-use control functions.

Some typeFp(private-use) escape sequences recognised by theVT100

	Abbr	Name	Effect
ESC 7	DECSC	DEC Save Cursor	Saves the cursor position, encoding shift state and formatting attributes.
ESC 8	DECRC	DEC Restore Cursor	Restores the cursor position, encoding shift state and formatting attributes from the previous DECSC if any, otherwise resets these all to their defaults.

nF Escape sequences

If theESCis followed by a byte in the range0x20—0x2F,the escape sequence is of typenF.Said byte is followed by any number of additional bytes in this range, and then a byte in the range0x30-0x7E.These escape sequences are further subcategorised by the low two bits of the first byte, e.g. "type2F"for sequences where the first byte is0x22;and by whether the final byte is in the range0x30—0x3Findicating private use (e.g. "type2Fp") or not (e.g." type2Ft").

Most of thenFtsequences are for changing the current character set, and are listed inISO/IEC 2022.Some others:

Some type0Ft(announcement) ANSI escape sequences

	Abbr	Name	Effect
ESC SP F	ACS6 S7C1T	Announce Code Structure 6 Send 7-bit C1 Control Character to the Host	Makes the function keys send ESC + letter instead of 8-bit C1 codes.
ESC SP G	ACS7 S8C1T	Announce Code Structure 7 Send 8-bit C1 Control Character to the Host	Makes the function keys send 8-bit C1 codes.

If the first byte is '#' the public sequences are reserved for additional ISO-IR registered individual control functions.No such sequences are presently registered.Type3Fpsequences (which includes ones starting with '#') are available for private-use control functions.

Some type3Fp(private-use) escape sequences recognised by theVT100

	Abbr	Name	Effect
ESC # 3	DECDHL	DEC Double-Height Letters, Top Half	Makes the current line use characters twice as tall. This code is for the top half.
ESC # 4	DECDHL	DEC Double-Height Letters, Bottom Half	Makes the current line use characters twice as tall. This code is for the bottom half.
ESC # 5	DECSWL	DEC Single-Width Line	Makes the current line use single-width characters, per the default behaviour.
ESC # 6	DECDWL	DEC Double-Width Line	Makes the current line use double-width characters, discarding any characters in the second half of the line.

Examples

CSI 2 J— This clears the screen and, on some devices, locates the cursor to the y,x position 1,1 (upper left corner).

CSI 32 m— This makes text green. The green may be a dark, dull green, so you may wish to enable Bold with the sequenceCSI 1 mwhich would make it bright green, or combined asCSI 32; 1 m.Some implementations use the Bold state to make the character Bright.

CSI 0; 6 8; "DIR"; 13 p— This reassigns the key F10 to send to the keyboard buffer the string "DIR" and ENTER, which in the DOS command line would display the contents of the current directory. (MS-DOS ANSI.SYS only) This was sometimes used forANSI bombs.This is a private-use code (as indicated by the letter p), using a non-standard extension to include a string-valued parameter. Following the letter of the standard would consider the sequence to end at the letter D.

CSI s— This saves the cursor position. Using the sequenceCSI uwill restore it to the position. Say the current cursor position is 7(y) and 10(x). The sequenceCSI swill save those two numbers. Now you can move to a different cursor position, such as 20(y) and 3(x), using the sequenceCSI 20; 3 HorCSI 20; 3 f.Now if you use the sequence CSI u the cursor position will return to 7(y) and 10(x). Some terminals require the DEC sequencesESC 7/ESC 8instead which is more widely supported.

In shell scripting

ANSI escape codes are often used inUNIXand UNIX-liketerminalsto providesyntax highlighting.For example, on compatible terminals, the followinglistcommand color-codes file and directory names by type.

ls --color

Users can employ escape codes in their scripts by including them as part ofstandard outputorstandard error.For example, the following GNUsedcommand embellishes the output of themakecommand by displaying lines containing words starting with "WARN" inreverse videoand words starting with "ERR" in bright yellow on a dark red background (letter caseis ignored). The representations of the codes are highlighted.

make 2>&1 | sed -e 's/.*\bWARN.*/\x1b[7m&\x1b[0m/i' -e 's/.*\bERR.*/\x1b[93;41m&\x1b[0m/i'

The followingBashfunction flashes the terminal (by alternately sending reverse and normal video mode codes) until the user presses a key.

flasher(){whiletrue;doprintf\\e[?5h;sleep0.1;printf\\e[?5l;read-s-n1-t1&&break;done;}

This can be used to alert a programmer when a lengthy command terminates, such as withmake; flasher .

printf\\033c

This will reset the console, similar to the commandreseton modern Linux systems; however it should work even on older Linux systems and on other (non-Linux) UNIX variants.

In C

This following programs creates a table of numbers from 0 to 109, each of which is displayed in the format specified by theSelect Graphic Renditionescape sequence using that number as the graphic rendition code.

Output of example program onGnome Terminal

#include<stdio.h>

intmain(void)
{
inti,j,n;

for(i=0;i<11;i++){
for(j=0;j<10;j++){
n=10*i+j;
if(n>108)break;
printf("\033[%dm %3d\033[m ",n,n);
}
printf("\n");
}
return0;
}

Terminal input sequences

Pressing special keys on the keyboard, as well as outputting many xterm CSI, DCS, or OSC sequences, often produces a CSI, DCS, or OSC sequence, sent from the terminal to the computer as though the user typed it.

When typing input on a terminal keypresses outside the normal main alphanumeric keyboard area can be sent to the host as ANSI sequences. For keys that have an equivalent output function, such as the cursor keys, these often mirror the output sequences. However, for most keypresses there isn't an equivalent output sequence to use.

There are several encoding schemes, and unfortunately most terminals mix sequences from different schemes, so host software has to be able to deal with input sequences using any scheme. To complicate the matter, the VT terminals themselves have two schemes of input,normal modeandapplication modethat can be switched by the application.

(draft section)

<char> -> char
<esc> <nochar> -> esc
<esc> <esc> -> esc
<esc> <char> -> Alt-keypress or keycode sequence
<esc> '[' <nochar> -> Alt-[
<esc> '[' (<modifier>) <char> -> keycode sequence, <modifier> is a decimal number and defaults to 1 (xterm)
<esc> '[' (<keycode>) (';'<modifier>) '~' -> keycode sequence, <keycode> and <modifier> are decimal numbers and default to 1 (vt)

If the terminating character is '~', the first number must be present and is a keycode number, the second number is an optional modifier value. If the terminating character is a letter, the letter is the keycode value, and the optional number is the modifier value.

The modifier value defaults to 1, and after subtracting 1 is a bitmap of modifier keys being pressed:Meta+Ctrl+Alt+⇧ Shift.So, for example,<esc>[4;2~is ⇧ Shift+End,<esc>[20~is function keyF9,<esc>[5CisCtrl+→.

In other words, the modifier is the sum of the following numbers:

Key pressed	Number	Comment
	1	always added, the rest are optional
Shift	1
(Left) Alt	2
Control	4
Meta	8

vt sequences:
<esc>[1~ - Home <esc>[16~ - <esc>[31~ - F17
<esc>[2~ - Insert <esc>[17~ - F6 <esc>[32~ - F18
<esc>[3~ - Delete <esc>[18~ - F7 <esc>[33~ - F19
<esc>[4~ - End <esc>[19~ - F8 <esc>[34~ - F20
<esc>[5~ - PgUp <esc>[20~ - F9 <esc>[35~ -
<esc>[6~ - PgDn <esc>[21~ - F10
<esc>[7~ - Home <esc>[22~ -
<esc>[8~ - End <esc>[23~ - F11
<esc>[9~ - <esc>[24~ - F12
<esc>[10~ - F0 <esc>[25~ - F13
<esc>[11~ - F1 <esc>[26~ - F14
<esc>[12~ - F2 <esc>[27~ -
<esc>[13~ - F3 <esc>[28~ - F15
<esc>[14~ - F4 <esc>[29~ - F16
<esc>[15~ - F5 <esc>[30~ -

xterm sequences:
<esc>[A - Up <esc>[K - <esc>[U -
<esc>[B - Down <esc>[L - <esc>[V -
<esc>[C - Right <esc>[M - <esc>[W -
<esc>[D - Left <esc>[N - <esc>[X -
<esc>[E - <esc>[O - <esc>[Y -
<esc>[F - End <esc>[1P - F1 <esc>[Z -
<esc>[G - Keypad 5 <esc>[1Q - F2
<esc>[H - Home <esc>[1R - F3
<esc>[I - <esc>[1S - F4
<esc>[J - <esc>[T -

<esc>[Ato<esc>[Dare the same as the ANSI output sequences. The<modifier>is normally omitted if no modifier keys are pressed, but most implementations always emit the<modifier>forF1–F4.(draft section)

Xterm has a comprehensive documentation page on the various function-key and mouse input sequence schemes from DEC's VT terminals and various other terminals it emulates.Thomas Dickey has added a lot of support to it over time;he also maintains a list of default keys used by other terminal emulators for comparison.

• On the Linux console, certain function keys generate sequences of the formCSI [char.The CSI sequence should terminate on the[.
• Old versions ofTerminatorgenerateSS3 1;modifierscharwhenF1–F4are pressed with modifiers. The faulty behavior was copied fromGNOME Terminal.
• xterm repliesCSIrow;columnRif asked for cursor position andCSI 1;modifiersRif theF3key is pressed with modifiers, which collide in the case ofrow== 1.This can be avoided by using the?private modifier asCSI? 6 n,which will be reflected in the response asCSI?row;columnR.
• many terminals prependESCto any character that is typed with the alt key down. This creates ambiguity for uppercase letters and symbols@[\]^_,which would form C1 codes.
• KonsolegeneratesSS3modifierscharwhenF1–F4are pressed with modifiers.
• iTerm2supports reporting additional keys via an enhanced CSI u mode.

See also

• ANSI art
• Control character
• Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator(AVATAR)
• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2
• C0 and C1 control codes

External links

• Standard ECMA-48, Control Functions For Coded Character Sets.(5th edition, June 1991), European Computer Manufacturers Association, Geneva 1991 (also published by ISO and IEC as standard ISO/IEC 6429)
• vt100.net DEC Documents
• "ANSI.SYS -- ansi terminal emulation escape sequences".Archived fromthe originalon 6 February 2006.Retrieved22 February2007.
• Xterm / Escape Sequences
• AIXterm / Escape Sequences
• A collection of escape sequences for terminals that are vaguely compliant with ECMA-48 and friends.
• "ANSI Escape Sequences".Archived fromthe originalon 25 May 2011.
• ITU-T Rec. T.416 (03/93) Information technology – Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format: Character content architectures