gso (GreenStdOut)

GreenStdOut: Colour stdout green 💚, to differentiate stdout and stderr, .. and much more ..

GreenStdOut is a collection of utilities that helps you distinguish stdout from stderr in your command outputs. It can either colorize stdout in green 💚, or prefix output lines with labels (OUT:), or wrap everything in Markdown/HTML spans. This makes it easier to debug scripts and commands where both streams are mixed.

---

Features

• 🟢 Colorized stdout by default (stdout shown in green, stderr unchanged)
• 🏷 Label mode with OUT: prefix for each line in stdout (useful if the command already uses colors)
• 📝 Markdown mode with <pre> and HTML spans for stdout
• 🎯 Exit code reporting, always displayed at the end
• 🤫 Optionally suppress the exit code line with -q

---

Installation

Simply source the function in your shell (e.g. ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc).

# Clone or copy the function definition into your shell config
source /path/to/gso.sh

Then reload your shell or run source ~/.bashrc.

---

Usage

Command outline

gso [-hq][-l|-m] <command> <command-args-and-opts>

gso command args...                # stdout in green, stderr normal
gso -h                             # print help and exit
gso -l command args...             # prefix OUT: labels per line for stdout, useful when colourised output is not desired but still output differentiation is needed.
gso -q                             # suppress [GSO] exit code print
gso -m command args...             # output formatted in markdown (HTML spans) inside <pre>

# Options:
#   -l and -m are mutually exclusive

Examples

Normal run (colorized stdout)

$ gso ls . /doesnotexist

current directory contents
ls: cannot access '/doesnotexist': No such file or directory
[GSO] exit code: 2

Label mode

$ gso -l ls . /doesnotexist

OUT: current directory contents
ls: cannot access '/doesnotexist': No such file or directory
[GSO] exit code: 2

Markdown mode

$ gso -m ls . /doesnotexist

<pre>
<span style="color:green">current directory contents</span>
ls: cannot access '/doesnotexist': No such file or directory
<span style="color:red">[GSO]</span> exit code: 2
</pre>

Quiet exit

$ gso -q ls . /doesnotexist

current directory contents
ls: cannot access '/doesnotexist': No such file or directory
# (exit code still returned, just not printed)
$ echo $?
2

---

Environment Variables

Environment variables can be used to set the shell mode at the start. They mimic the short CLI options, but CLI options take priority.

• GSO_NOEXIT → -q
• GSO_LBL → -l
• GSO_MD → -m

---

License

MIT License

---

Contributing

Check our contribution guide.