Life in a colour – part 2. :)

OK, it’s not fine and tuned and it uses regex for simple task, and it’s slow, BUT – it works! 🙂

Most of time, of course: as long as your column names are left-aligned. And it also kills pipe, so it has to be improved! 😉

Results first:

Nice, colourful output. You decide which colours to use, how many of them will be displayed, in which order. It is all up to you! 🙂

Code:

PowerShell, using GeSHi 1.0.8.8

1. function out–colour {
2.         if ($Input) {
3.                 [int[]]$columns = @()
4.                 # select colours you prefer and the one that a readable on your console.. 🙂
5.                 $colours = @(‘Magenta’,‘Yellow’,‘Cyan’,‘Green’)
6.                 foreach ($obj in ($Input | Out-String -Stream)) {
7.                         if ($columns.count -eq 0) {
8.                                 $match = $obj | Select-String –AllMatches -Pattern ‘[^|s]-{2,}’ | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Matches
9.                                 if ( ($match | Measure-Object | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Count) -ge 2) {
10.                                         $columns = $match | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Index
11.                                 }
12.                                 Write-Host $obj
13.                         } else {
14.                                 foreach ($char in $obj.ToCharArray()) {
15.                                         $colour = $null
16.                                         $X = $Host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition.X
17.                                         for ($i=0; $i -lt $columns.count – 1; $i++) {
18.                                                 Write-Verbose "i = $i ; X = $X"
19.                                                 if ( ( $X -ge $columns[$i]) -and ( $X -lt $columns[$i+1] ) ) {
20.                                                         $colour = $colours[($i % $colours.count)]
21.                                                 }
22.                                         }
23.                                         if (!$colour) {
24.                                                 $colour = $colours[(($columns.count –1) % $colours.count)]
25.                                         }
26.                                         Write-Host -ForegroundColor $colour $char -NoNewline
27.                                 }
28.                         "`r"
29.                         }
30.                 }
31.         }
32. }

It was fun to write it, and fun to play with it! 🙂 PowerShell is Ring of Power for sure! Wonder if I become a Nazgul one day… 😉