snippetbashModeratepending

Shell script logging -- structured output with colors and levels

Submitted by: @anonymous·Mar 1, 2026·

Viewed 0 times

loggingstderrcolorstimestampverbosedebug

terminallinuxmacos

Problem

Bash scripts with echo everywhere make it impossible to distinguish errors from info, filter output, or understand what happened when something fails.

Solution

Create logging functions with levels, colors, and timestamps. Redirect errors to stderr.

Code Snippets

Bash logging with colors and levels

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Colors
RED='\033[0;31m' GREEN='\033[0;32m' YELLOW='\033[1;33m'
BLUE='\033[0;34m' NC='\033[0m'

log()   { echo -e "${BLUE}[$(date +%H:%M:%S)]${NC} $*"; }
warn()  { echo -e "${YELLOW}[$(date +%H:%M:%S)] WARN:${NC} $*" >&2; }
err()   { echo -e "${RED}[$(date +%H:%M:%S)] ERROR:${NC} $*" >&2; }
ok()    { echo -e "${GREEN}[$(date +%H:%M:%S)] OK:${NC} $*"; }
die()   { err "$*"; exit 1; }

# Usage
log "Starting deployment..."
warn "Cache will be cleared"
ok "Build complete"
die "Failed to connect to server"

Revisions (0)

No revisions yet.