Options: Add an option to force non-colored output

[rappazzo]

If the output is to be consumed by an application which does not handle
formatted output, the script can be invoked with --no-color or -p to
omit the formatting.

[hnarayanan]

Cool. Out of curiosity, what is this application you're trying to pipe the output to?

[hnarayanan]

Also, how does your usage of shift affect the order of you input flag?

[rappazzo]

Out of curiosity, what is this application you're trying to pipe the output to?

I am running a fun little java program on a machine at work that plays sound clips, and does some text-to-speech from user input. We were also using the spotify app on it, and I wanted put the control in there. The way that I invoke the command in java is (for example):

new ProcessBuilder().command("sh", "-c", "spotify status").start();

Then I would read the result from the subprocess, and report back.

---

Also, how does your usage of shift affect the order of you input flag?

The intent of this patch is that you can only use the --no-color argument as the first argument. If the argument is present, then set the mode to be no-color and shift ARGV so that the rest of the command doesn't know about it.

I felt that this was the least intrusive way to add the flag. If you intend to add other arguments in the future, then perhaps a better approach would be to create a command array, then scan ARGV to populate the command array (status, play, etc). This would allow you to differentiate the flags from the commands.

[hnarayanan]

Cool, thank you for the explanation. I have not forgotten about this pull request (or the others), just mulling over how best to incorporate it.

[hnarayanan]

Still not forgotten!

I finally changed the syntax on the help in general to use <> for required params and [] for optional params. Now I'm one step closer to merging this, but will do so after some other odds and ends. 😺

[dkniffin]

@hnarayanan Any chance of getting this merged soon? Since it'd be the first flag that the script supports, I don't see a problem doing it this way. A more robust way to do this would be with bash's built-in getopts functionality.

Edit: Also, since it seems you're busy with other projects, have you considered giving other users collaborator access to help you manage the project?

[hnarayanan]

I’m sorry, I don’t know how quick I can act on this (or anything else). I will get to it when I can.

[hnarayanan]

And I am sorry I was curt earlier. I am dealing with a lot of other stresses in life, and I reacted when even this project (which is supposed to be fun for me) became a place where I was expected to quickly act on something.

I really will get to it as soon as I can make the time to focus on this project again.

[hnarayanan]

And I only now saw your edit to the original comment. I will consider giving other people commit access, yes.

[frahugo]

I ran into the same coolers issue when using the script in a pipe. Here's what I did to test if the script is running in a terminal or not:

cecho(){
    if [ -t 1 ]
    then
        bold=$(tput bold);
        green=$(tput setaf 2);
        reset=$(tput sgr0);
        echo $bold$green"$1"$reset;
    else
        echo "$1"
    fi
}