Columnizing a list with ANSI-color codes?

Question

Using column or pr -T3 to columnize an input with ANSI escapes results in bad align of the items – they are under or overaligned. For example: ls -1 --color=always|column.

I'm writing a file manager and would want 2 columns format, like in Midnight Commander. The good part is that the project is written in Zsh script and I would want a nice way of columnizing color fd ./exa -1 --color=always/ls -1 --color=always output, including a Bash/Zsh/Awk/etc. script as a solution. Is there a way?

Answer 1

It looks like the zsh builtin print can handle colors when creating columns with the -C and -c options. The source code even has this note:

* Prevent misaligned columns due to escape sequences by
* skipping over them. Octals \033 and \233 are the
* possible escape characters recognized by ANSI.

Converting the command output to arguments for print can be slightly tricky, but this combination of a command substitution with $(...) and an expansion split by line using ${(f)...} should work:

print -C 2 ${(f)"$(ls -1 --color=always)"}

You also can pass in data via a coprocess.

Answer 2

https://github.com/tecolicom/App-ansicolumn is probably the tools you are looking for. The author has an ansifold and other utilities on gihub and CPAN.