On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 05:18:45AM +0000, tony.little at comcast.net wrote:
> I was investigating how my copy of knoppix works, and as I was reading the file 'knoppix-autoconfig' I
> found these variables with some weird strings being assigned to them:
> 
> # ANSI COLORS
> CRE="^M^[[K"
> NORMAL="^[[0;39m"

<snip>
 
> I can tell that these are modifiers for the color of the text but I whould like to know
> which part does what and where can I find a definition of these?


Google on ansi terminal escape sequences
http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm

These come from the original smart terminals(DEC VT52, VT100,..).

The kernel implements a terminal emulation which is what Knoppix interacts
with initially.


Karl.