terminal_style

A minimal Rust library for styling terminal text using ANSI escape codes. Supports 256-color as well as bold, italic, faint, underline, and inverse formatting. Easily apply foreground/background colors from hex, RGB, or ANSI 8-bit values to strings, 1D vectors, and 2D vectors. Perfect for simple CLI tools.

Installation

terminal_style is published as a crate on crates.io.

cargo add terminal_style

Features

• Convert RGB or Hex to ANSI 256-color
• Apply foreground/background color to strings
• Format text as bold, italic, faint, inverse, or underline
• Graceful handling of invalid color inputs

Usage

Formatting functions work with strings, vectors, and 2D vectors of strings seamlessly. It also supports references, so you can pass either owned or borrowed values.

Supported Input Types

Example

use terminal_style::{
    format::{bold, underline, color, background},
    color::ColorConversionError,
};

fn main() -> Result<(), ColorConversionError> {
    // --- Single string styling ---
    let text = "Styled!";

    // Using `?` to propagate errors if color conversion fails
    let fg = color("#FF1493", text)?;       // Foreground color (pink)
    let bg = background("#EEDDFF", text)?;  // Background color (lavender)
    let bolded = bold(fg.clone());          // Bold formatting

    println!("FG: {}", fg);
    println!("BG: {}", bg);
    println!("Bold: {}", bolded);

    // --- 1D vector of strings ---
    let texts_1d = vec!["Red".to_string(), "Green".to_string(), "Blue".to_string()];
    let colored_1d = color([255, 0, 0], texts_1d.clone())?;  // Red foreground
    let bolded_1d = bold(texts_1d.clone());

    println!("\n1D Colored vector:");
    for line in &colored_1d {
        println!("{}", line);
    }

    println!("\n1D Bold vector:");
    for line in &bolded_1d {
        println!("{}", line);
    }

    // --- 2D vector of strings ---
    let texts_2d = vec![
        vec!["A".to_string(), "B".to_string()],
        vec!["C".to_string(), "D".to_string()],
    ];

    let bolded_2d: Vec<Vec<String>> = bold(texts_2d.clone());
    let bg_colored_2d = background([255, 105, 180], texts_2d.clone())?; // Pink background
    let bold_underline_bg_2d = bold(underline(bg_colored_2d.clone()));

    // Output demo
    println!("\n2D Bold vector:");
    for row in &bolded_2d {
        for cell in row {
            print!("{} ", cell);
        }
        println!();
    }

    println!("\n2D Background colored vector:");
    for row in &bg_colored_2d {
        for cell in row {
            print!("{} ", cell);
        }
        println!();
    }

    println!("\n2D Bold + Underline + Background colored vector:");
    for row in &bold_underline_bg_2d {
        for cell in row {
            print!("{} ", cell);
        }
        println!();
    }

    Ok(())
}

Color Conversion Examples

Utility functions enable converting between RGB, HEX, and ANSI 8-bit values.

use terminal_style::color::*;

fn main() {
    // RGB to Hex
    assert_eq!(rgb_to_hex([255, 165, 0]), "#FFA500");

    // Hex to RGB
    assert_eq!(hex_to_rgb("#00FF00"), [0, 255, 0]);

    // RGB to ANSI
    assert_eq!(rgb_to_ansi8([255, 0, 0]), 196);

    // Hex to ANSI
    assert_eq!(hex_to_ansi8("0000FF"), 21);

    // ANSI to RGB
    assert_eq!(ansi8_to_rgb(46), Some([0, 255, 0]));

    // ANSI to HEX
    assert_eq!(ansi8_to_hex(196), "#FF0000"); // Red
}

Additional examples in the examples folder.

Tests

cargo test

Structure

• color/: Utility color conversions (hex, rgb, ansi)
• format/: Terminal text styling functions
• tests/: Test suite
• examples/: Usage examples

Authors

Ron Ilan

License

MIT

Coded in Rust with a little help from the LLMs. Based on the lovingly handcrafted colors.crumb.. Derived from work done on Impossible.js. Enjoy.

Fabriqué au Canada : Made in Canada 🇨🇦