Preserving colors when piping yaourt through sort

By using ls --color=always the colors should be preserved. I'm unsure if it is gnu specific though. [Edit from OP: yes, it is.]

The case is that ls detect whether output is to tty or not.

If it is not it normally do not print colors and do not translate "unprintable characters" to question marks. This can be added by the -q option.

More on the subject: Number of lines outputted by ls.

gnu coreutils source ls; ref. on some of the colors data:

• enum definition.
• link to option word
• option definition

Edit:

For gnu coreutils ls: --color=always
For OS X's ls: set environment variable CLICOLOR_FORCE and G means color. The core is conforming to ls IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. Other options are extensions that wary between implementations.

OK. Had a deeper look at this. Though from what I read around people also install gnu coreutils on OS X, I guess you perhaps use the original.

The OS X man pages for ls state:

CLICOLOR_FORCE  
    Color sequences are normally disabled if the output isn't directed to a
    terminal.  This can be overridden by setting this flag.  The TERM 
    variable still needs to reference a color capable terminal however
    otherwise it is not possible to determine which color sequences to use.

From the source:

Mac OS X 10.8.2 Source -> file_cmds-220.7 -> ls/

From that code it is also quickly clear that one can set

CLICOLOR_FORCE

to force color.

As it first parses arguments and setenv color on G:

    case 'G':
        setenv("CLICOLOR", "", 1);
        break;

And after argv parsing:

/* CLICOLOR is set    AND    is a tty            OR */
if (getenv("CLICOLOR") && (isatty(STDOUT_FILENO) || 
etenv("CLICOLOR_FORCE")))
/*  force cli color is set */

By next section if TERM is set, color is used:

if (tgetent(termcapbuf, getenv("TERM")) == 1) {

echo $TERM should yield a color capable terminal. But if you get colors by normal this should be the case.

---

Edit to last update:

Not sure then. It is strange. Not only the extra line but also that you do not have any total ... at the start. You could start out by checking the output of something like this:

function dir() {
/bin/ls -FaGl "${@}" | awk '
    function chr2hex(chr) {
        return sprintf("%02x", index(i2x, chr));
    }
    function str2hex(str) {
        r = ""
        for (i = 1; i <= length(str); ++i)
            r = r chr2hex(substr(str, i, 1));
        return r;
    }
    BEGIN {
        i2x = ""
        for (i = 0; i < 256; ++i)
            i2x = sprintf("%s%c", i2x, i);
        printf("FNR        : %d\n", FNR);
        printf("FIELDWIDTHS: \"%s\"\n", FIELDWIDTHS);
        printf("FS         : \"%s\"\n", str2hex(FS));
        printf("RS         : \"%s\"\n", str2hex(RS));
        printf("OFS        : \"%s\"\n", str2hex(OFS));
        printf("ORS        : \"%s\"\n", str2hex(OFS));
    }
    {
        printf("%2d:%2d:%2d \"%s\"\n", FNR, NR, NF, $0);
        total += $4;
    }
    END {
        printf("%21s: %d %s\n", "total", total / 1024, "KiB");
        printf("FNR        : %d\n", FNR);
        printf("From       : \"%s\"\n", FILENAME);
    }
'
}

Should give you something like – (From could be "-" by e.g. gawk):

$ ./dir testdir
FNR        : 0
FIELDWIDTHS: ""
FS         : "20"
RS         : "0a"
OFS        : "20"
ORS        : "20"
 1: 1: 2 "total 24"
 2: 2: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 6 mattdmo 4096 Apr 17 21:46 ./"
 3: 3: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 8 mattdmo 4096 Apr 18 10:47 ../"
 4: 4: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 2 mattdmo 4096 Apr 17 21:46 ab1/"
 5: 5: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 2 mattdmo 4096 Apr 17 21:46 ab2/"
 6: 6: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 2 mattdmo 4096 Apr 17 21:46 ab3/"
 7: 7: 8 "drwxrwxr-x 2 mattdmo 4096 Apr 17 21:46 ab4/"
                total: 24 KB
FNR        : 7
From       : ""

"Boldness" is set separately from "foreground color", but it is not supported by Mutt. All you can do in Mutt is select a foreground and background color, no boldness.

In other cases, where it is possible to output arbitrary ANSI escape sequences, you would set a "bold color 208" as follows (you can execute that in any terminal that allows bold text to see the effect, Gnome Terminal works fine if you have it configured to display bold text):

echo this is NORMAL
echo '\e[1m' this is BOLD '\e[0m'
echo '\e[1;38;5;208m' this is BOLD 208 '\e[0m'
echo '\e[38;5;208m' this is NORMAL 208 '\e[0m'

(The SGR parameter "1" will turn on bold. You send it with <Esc>[1m, and you can of course combine it with others, e.g. <Esc>[1;5m or as in the above example, where 38;5;x selects a color from the XTerm 256-color space.)