How to have tail -f show colored output

Try out multitail. This is an übergeneralization of tail -f. You can watch multiple files in separate windows, highlight lines based on their content, and more.

multitail -c /path/to/log

The colors are configurable. If the default color scheme doesn't work for you, write your own in the config file. For example, call multitail -cS amir_log /path/to/log with the following ~/.multitailrc:

colorscheme:amir_log
cs_re:green:INFO
cs_re:red:SEVERE

Another solution, if you're on a server where it's inconvenient to install non-standard tools, is to combine tail -f with sed or awk to add color selection control sequences. This requires tail -f to flush its standard output without delay even when its standard output is a pipe, I don't know if all implementations do this.

tail -f /path/to/log | awk '
  /INFO/ {print "\033[32m" $0 "\033[39m"}
  /SEVERE/ {print "\033[31m" $0 "\033[39m"}
'

or with sed

tail -f /path/to/log | sed --unbuffered \
    -e 's/\(.*INFO.*\)/\o033[32m\1\o033[39m/' \
    -e 's/\(.*SEVERE.*\)/\o033[31m\1\o033[39m/'

If your sed isn't GNU sed, replace \o033 by a literal escape character and remove --unbuffered.

Yet another possibility is to run tail -f in an Emacs shell buffer and use Emacs's syntax coloring abilities.

grc, the generic colourizer is pretty cool.

apt-get install grc

Just do

grc tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

and enjoy!

You’ll also find it on GitHub.

Have you had a look at ccze? You have the possibility to customize the default colors of some keywords using the option -c or directly in your configuration file. If your screen is clearing after colorizing you must use option -A.

Edit:

If you really would like to have the complete line colored in red, you could also have a try at the following:

$ tail -f myfile.log | perl -pe 's/.*SEVERE.*/\e[1;31m$&\e[0m/g'

\e[1;31m will give you the red color. If you would like some yellow, use \e[1;33m, and for green use \e[1;32m. The \e[0m restores the normal text color.