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up vote 4 down vote favorite
3

I have created this Function , which generate below output on terminal , but this function seems complex, So I posted here for any improvement or for same alternate solution. enter image description here

#!/bin/bash
function box_out() {
        input_char=$(echo "$@" | wc -c)
        line=$(for i in `seq 0 $input_char`; do printf "-"; done)
        # tput This should be the best option. what tput does is it will read the terminal info and render the correctly escaped ANSI code for you. code like \033[31m will break the readline library in some of the terminals.
        tput bold
        line="$(tput setaf 3)${line}"
        space=${line//-/ }
        echo " ${line}"
        printf '|' ; echo -n "$space" ; printf "%s\n" '|';
        printf '| ' ;tput setaf 4; echo -n "$@"; tput setaf 3 ; printf "%s\n" ' |';
        printf '|' ; echo -n "$space" ; printf "%s\n" '|';
        echo " ${line}"
        tput sgr 0
}

box_out $@
share|improve this question
up vote 9 down vote accepted

As your shebang and syntax indicates unportable bash, I prefer it this way:

function box_out()
{
  local s="$*"
  tput setaf 3
  echo " -${s//?/-}-
| ${s//?/ } |
| $(tput setaf 4)$s$(tput setaf 3) |
| ${s//?/ } |
 -${s//?/-}-"
  tput sgr 0
}

Of course, you can optimize it if you wish.

Update as requested in comment, to handle multiline text too.

function box_out()
{
  local s=("$@") b w
  for l in "${s[@]}"; do
    ((w<${#l})) && { b="$l"; w="${#l}"; }
  done
  tput setaf 3
  echo " -${b//?/-}-
| ${b//?/ } |"
  for l in "${s[@]}"; do
    printf '| %s%*s%s |\n' "$(tput setaf 4)" "-$w" "$l" "$(tput setaf 3)"
  done
  echo "| ${b//?/ } |
 -${b//?/-}-"
  tput sgr 0
}

Call it with multiple parameters, like box_out 'first line' 'more line' 'even more line'.

share|improve this answer
    
+1 I like the replace text with border. :) – peterph Mar 30 '13 at 18:20
1  
Awesome.............. You are Master .... – Rahul Patil Mar 31 '13 at 8:29
    
How would I apply this function to multiple lines, or a single line with \n type CRs? – TryTryAgain Jun 2 at 17:48
    
@manatwork that's marvelous, BUT... it's not working for expanding variables...and then if I try any quoting to resolve, it prints on one line again. Thank you so much for the quick response and brilliant solution! – TryTryAgain Jun 2 at 19:17
1  
Variable expansion should occur before the box_out function being executed. Double quotes and escapes should still work as usual: pastebin.com/ekmUKUkn By the way, you also use bash, right? – manatwork Jun 3 at 7:20
up vote 2 down vote

So, my solution is not quite the same as yours, but strictly speaking it prints a box around the text, and the implementation is a bit simpler so I thought I'd share.

banner() {
    msg="# $* #"
    edge=$(echo "$msg" | sed 's/./#/g')
    echo "$edge"
    echo "$msg"
    echo "$edge"
}

And here it is in action:

$ banner "hi"
######
# hi #
######
$ banner "hi there"
############
# hi there #
############

Just plain text, no fancy ansi colors or anything.

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