Is there anyway to pass terminal colors through a pipe?

As a simple example, ls -l --color=always | grep ii.

When you just run the ls -l --color=always part alone, you get the filenames color coded. But adding grep ii removes the color coding and just has the grep match highlighting.

Screenshot of both examples:

In the above example I would want ii.mp3 and ii.png filenames to retain the cyan and magenta highlighting, respectively. With or without the grep match highlighting.

Question is not specific to ls or grep.

If this is possible, is there a correct term/name for it? I am unable to locate anything.

  • Eager EagleEnglish
    5•5 hours ago

    hmm this gives me all colors (from ls and grep)

    /usr/bin/ls -l --color=always | /usr/bin/grep --color=always a

    (I’m using their full paths because I usually alias ls and grep to eza and rg respectively)

    There’s a export CLICOLOR_FORCE=1 you can try to avoid repeating --color=always, but that didn’t work for me with ls and grep specifically.

    Edit: there’s also a FORCE_COLOR=1 that is popular, but again, neither ls nor grep seem to care.