colorize-url

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Apply distinct ANSI colors to URL components (scheme, host, path, query, fragment) for readability. Query string keys and values get separate colors.

Useful when inspecting URLs in logs, debugging API requests, or comparing similar URLs -- the color-coding makes structural differences pop.

Quick start

$ colorize-url https://example.com/products?category=shirts&page=2

Output (colors shown conceptually):

https://example.com/products?category=shirts&page=2
^^^^^            ^^^ ^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^^       ^^^^
gray             white cyan     yellow green  yellow green
     ^^^                     ^        ^      ^
     white                   darker   white  darker

In practice: scheme is gray, hostname is bright white, path is bright cyan with white slashes, query parameter keys are bright yellow, values are green, and separators (?, &, =) are dimmed.

Common examples

Pipe URLs from logs or commands:

echo "https://api.example.net/v2/users/42?format=json" | xargs colorize-url

Compare two similar URLs side-by-side (with terminal tools like diff or colordiff):

colorize-url "https://api.example.net/v1/users/42" > /tmp/url1
colorize-url "https://api.example.net/v2/users/42" > /tmp/url2
diff /tmp/url1 /tmp/url2

Inspect fragment identifiers:

colorize-url "https://docs.example.com/api/reference#authentication"

Handle edge-case query strings (empty values, valueless keys):

colorize-url "https://example.com/?debug&key=&foo=bar"

Output preserves whether = was present: debug (no =), key= (empty value with =), foo=bar (normal pair).

Reference

All options

Flag Description
-h, --help Show help message

Color scheme

Exit codes

Code Meaning
0 Success
2 Usage error (no URL provided, or URL missing protocol)

Dependencies

None (pure bash string manipulation with ANSI escape codes).