Eight Colors

A tiny ANSI color helper for terminal output.

Install

npm i eight-colors

Features

• Eight basic colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white
• Background colors via EC.bg.*
• Bright colors via EC.br.*
• Bright background colors via EC.br.bg.*
• Text styles: reset, bold, faint, italic, underline, inverse, hidden, strike
• Remove ANSI escape sequences with EC.remove()
• Colored logging helpers such as EC.logRed()
• CJS, ESM, TypeScript types, and browser bundle
• Supports NO_COLOR, FORCE_COLOR, --no-color, and --color
• Zero dependencies

Quick Start

CommonJS

const EC = require('eight-colors');

console.log(EC.red('red string'));
console.log(EC.bg.red('red background'));
console.log(EC.br.red('bright red string'));
console.log(EC.br.bg.red('bright red background'));
console.log(EC.italic('italic text'));
console.log(EC.underline('underline text'));
console.log(EC.green(EC.underline('green underline text')));

ESM

import EC from 'eight-colors';

console.log(EC.red('red string'));
console.log(EC.br.bg.red('bright red background'));

More Examples

// remove ANSI escape sequences
const redString = EC.red('red string');
const plainString = EC.remove(redString);
console.assert(plainString === 'red string');

// color log helpers: print and return the colored string
const logged = EC.logRed('string1', 'string2');
console.assert(EC.remove(logged) === 'string1 string2');

EC.logRed('log red');
EC.logGreen('log green');
EC.logYellow('log yellow');
EC.logCyan('log cyan');
EC.logWhite('log white');

// log with multiple arguments
EC.log('log 2 arguments', EC.red('2'));
EC.logGreen('logGreen 2 arguments', '2');
EC.logMagenta('logMagenta 3 arguments', EC.red('2'), '3');

Color Control

EC.disabled controls whether ANSI escape sequences are added at runtime:

EC.disabled = true;   // all color functions return plain strings
EC.disabled = false;  // back to normal

On module initialization, eight-colors also reads environment variables and CLI flags:

• NO_COLOR or --no-color: disable colors
• FORCE_COLOR or --color: enable colors
• If both disabled and forced options are present, disabled takes precedence

The environment check is based on key presence, not on a specific value.

API

Text colors:

EC.black(str)
EC.red(str)
EC.green(str)
EC.yellow(str)
EC.blue(str)
EC.magenta(str)
EC.cyan(str)
EC.white(str)

Background colors:

EC.bg.black(str)
EC.bg.red(str)
EC.bg.green(str)
EC.bg.yellow(str)
EC.bg.blue(str)
EC.bg.magenta(str)
EC.bg.cyan(str)
EC.bg.white(str)

Bright colors:

EC.br.black(str)
EC.br.red(str)
EC.br.green(str)
EC.br.yellow(str)
EC.br.blue(str)
EC.br.magenta(str)
EC.br.cyan(str)
EC.br.white(str)

Bright background colors:

EC.br.bg.black(str)
EC.br.bg.red(str)
EC.br.bg.green(str)
EC.br.bg.yellow(str)
EC.br.bg.blue(str)
EC.br.bg.magenta(str)
EC.br.bg.cyan(str)
EC.br.bg.white(str)

Styles:

EC.reset(str)
EC.bold(str)
EC.faint(str)
EC.italic(str)
EC.underline(str)
EC.inverse(str)
EC.hidden(str)
EC.strike(str)

Helpers:

EC.remove(str)
EC.log(...args)

EC.logBlack(...args)
EC.logRed(...args)
EC.logGreen(...args)
EC.logYellow(...args)
EC.logBlue(...args)
EC.logMagenta(...args)
EC.logCyan(...args)
EC.logWhite(...args)

Property:

EC.disabled  // boolean, default: false

Notes:

• EC.log() joins multiple arguments with spaces before printing (no return value)
• EC.logRed(...args) and other color log methods print the result and also return the colored string
• Color log methods remove existing ANSI sequences from arguments before applying the new color

Browser

The package also provides a UMD bundle in dist/eight-colors.js.

<script src="path-to/eight-colors/dist/eight-colors.js"></script>
<script>
    const EC = window['eight-colors'];
    console.log(EC.red('red string'));
</script>

Note: Most browser consoles do not render ANSI escape sequences as colors (Firefox DevTools ignores them entirely; Chrome has limited support). The browser bundle is mainly useful when you want the same API shape across environments or need EC.remove() to strip ANSI sequences.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code
• https://handwiki.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code