Terminal – Get Character at Terminal Cursor Using ANSI Escape Codes

Termbin.com supports what you need.

$ grep --color=force foo /etc/motd | nc termbin.com 9999
http://termbin.com/xxxx

$ curl http://termbin.com/xxxx

You'll get exactly what you sent.

The service is running on a free and open software called Fiche so you can also install your own.

Have you got specific operations in mind?

Here is an example of using standout mode, which on many terminals will give a strong visible result:

tput smso; echo hello, world; tput rmso

The tput tool uses the value of the $TERM environment variable to determine which escape sequences to output - if any. For example

TERM=xterm
( tput smso; echo hello, world; tput rmso ) | hexdump -C
00000000  1b 5b 37 6d 68 65 6c 6c  6f 2c 20 77 6f 72 6c 64  |.[7mhello, world|
00000010  0a 1b 5b 32 37 6d                                 |..[27m|

TERM=dumb
( tput smso; echo hello, world; tput rmso ) | hexdump -C
00000000  68 65 6c 6c 6f 2c 20 77  6f 72 6c 64 0a           |hello, world.|

Interesting characteristic pairs can be found in man 5 terminfo, some of which are as follows:

• Standout: smso and rmso
• Underline: smul and rmul
• Blink (yes!): blink
• Doublewide: swidm and rwidm
• Reverse: rev
• Cancel all: sgr0

If you want to write bold text, but only if the terminal understands it, then a snippet like this will work

boldOn=$(tput smso)
boldOff=$(tput rmso)
# ...
printf "%s%s%s\n" "$boldOn" 'This message will be in bold, when available' "$boldOff"