Though most of the software do the right thing by checking if the standard output is an actual tty (isatty) to avoid colors when redirecting to something else (e.g. socket, fifo, etc).
The name NO_COLOR suggests a really binary choice which may be okay. Though GNU coreutils usually have a more selective option like --color=always|auto|never.
I'd prefer supporting a more general COLORS=on|off|compatible|...
Meaning:
- on: always on even when redirecting
- off: fully off
- compatible: maybe something like on by default and off if redirecting to a non-tty
- ...: add more choices
This is a very questionable heuristic. I'm not sure the exact date that support began, but I have been piping color output to `less -r/-R` for decades. This can be nice even for less than multi-terminal-page output just for "search".
isatty(stderr) would actually be more accurate for my specific use cases for when I don't `|&` or maybe even `isatty(stdin)`, but those are also imperfect heuristics.
The point is, since "auto" is a questionable heuristic, it is not so crazy/wrong to just default to color-on and have an off switch and that off switch is what NO_COLOR is about (as explained by the very first sentence in the linked article). Desirable defaults ultimately depend upon the distribution of your user's tastes (as always, more|less).
NO_COLOR is orthogonal to the isatty suppression.
NO_COLOR ensures that colors are off even when stdout is not redirected.
For example, when you have poor vision, poor quality display, or sit near a window, (or worse – a combination of these) the colored parts of the output might have lower contrast, low enough to make them impossible to read.
At least I do. :)
It would be good to unify it, perhaps some of the distributions can also have a hand in it.
terminfo also has "Mono mode" with the "-m" suffix which I don't see mentioned in the article.
I see a lot of handing of color options in the standard Ubuntu .bashrc https://gist.github.com/marioBonales/1637696
It seems that different software handles that question in different ways.
had no effect yet
