printf showing colour code instead of applying the colour in the second argument-CodePudding

I'm trying to apply a color into this printf trying to make it nice looking:

I'm building a script that shows a list of function names and their description of what it does.

#!/bin/bash

#Colours
greenColour="\e[0;32m\033[1m"
endColour="\033[0m\e[0m"
redColour="\e[0;31m\033[1m"

#Format the output in a table-like structure
printf "\n${greenColour}[ ]${endColour} %-15s %s\n" "${redColour}getPIP${endColour}" "Shows private IP"

But when I execute the script the first argument ([ ]) does get the colour applied but the second argument shows the color code instead of applying the other colour:

[ ] \e[0;31m\033[1mgetPIP\033[0m\e[0m Shows private IP

Any ideas if this is doable somehow?

Thanks in advance!

Expected: Apply colour to the second argument passed to printf Result: I see the colour code instead

CodePudding user response：

Double quotes are tricky in this case; a backslash doesn’t have the same meaning as in C’s double quotes… For example, this works for me:

greenColour=$'\033[01;32m'
endColour=$'\033[00m'
redColour=$'\033[01;31m'
printf "\n${greenColour}[ ]${endColour} %-15s %s\n" \
       "${redColour}getPIP${endColour}" \
       "Shows private IP"

On my terminal, [ ] is green and getPIP is red in this case. The codes used above are the “simplified” ones though, not the full 24-bit True Color ones.