Documentation



Get the look and feel you want on your Bash Script



📌 What’s Inside the PrettyBash?

This library is organized into several modules, each designed to tackle a specific aspect of visual enhancement:

Color & Formatting Module

Banish the endless sea of white text on a black background. This module provides easy-to-use functions for:

  • Text Colors: Output errors in red, successes in green, warnings in yellow, and information in blue.

  • Background Colors: Highlight important text with contrasting backgrounds.

  • Text Styles: Make text bold, dim, <u>underlined</u>, or even ~~blinking~~ (use sparingly!).

  • Example Function: print_success “Database backup completed!” would output a cheerful green confirmation message.

UI Components & Layout Module

Structure your script’s output like a modern application. This includes:

  • Headers & Footers: Create clear visual separations for different sections of your script.

  • Columns & Tables: Format lists of data (e.g., system information, file lists) into neatly aligned columns for easy reading.

  • Borders & Boxes: Draw boxes around crucial information, menus, or configuration summaries to make them stand out.

Progress & Feedback Module

[!NOTE]

This feature is incomplete ISSUE: #2

Replace cryptic processing delays with clear, dynamic feedback.

  • Spinners: Show a rotating cursor (|, /, -, \) to indicate that a long-running task is in progress.

  • Progress Bars: Provide a visual percentage bar for tasks where you can track completion (e.g., file downloads, data processing).

  • Status Indicators: Simple, dynamic updates on a single line (e.g., Processing... [OK]).

Interactive Elements Module

[!NOTE]

This feature is incomplete ISSUE: #3

Make your scripts more intuitive and less error-prone.

  • Interactive Menus: Present users with a numbered or lettered list of options to choose from, instead of requiring them to remember complex commands.

  • Enhanced Prompts: Use colored and formatted text in your read prompts to distinguish questions from other output.

  • “Are you sure?” Confirmations: Prevent accidental actions with bold, red confirmation dialogs before executing destructive commands.



🏗️ Getting Started

Simply source the main library script in your Bash project and call the provided functions. The library is designed to be modular, so you can include only the components you need without bloat.

How to Start Using PrettyBash?

Use the official (Recommended) template repository and start building.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/prettybash/template.git

[!IMPORTANT]

Don’t forget the --recurse-submodules option when you clone the repository,

If you already cloned the project and forgot --recurse-submodules, You must run following two commands from the main project git submodule init to initialize your local configuration file, and git submodule update to fetch all the files from the prettybash/template project, you can use the foolproof git submodule update --init --recursive command to also initialize, fetch and checkout nested submodule.

Run the following command time to time in your project to keep up to date with the latest version of the PrettyBash library.

git submodule update --remote

Manual Installation

Adding the PrettyBash library to an existing git project as a submodule.

git submodule add https://github.com/prettybash/prettybash.git prettybash

This command clones the prettybash repository into the specified path and records it in the .gitmodules file and the parent’s index.

Run the following command time to time in your project to keep up to date with the latest version of the PrettyBash Library.

git submodule update --remote



🪏 Examples

Open the prettybash/source/playground.sh file to play around.

Make the ‘playground.sh’ script executable

sudo chmod +x prettybash/source/playground.sh

Then run

./prettybash/source/playground.sh



🧰 Developer Resources