From the histring README: This program simply highlights strings using ANSI terminal escape codes. It started out as sample code for using regular expressions but it turned out that I used it so much that I thought it warrented a release. One of the most common things I use the program for is helping me parse the output of grep and diff. I think that this programs functionality should be folded in to those programs but until then histring does the job nicely. WWW: https://github.com/suntong/histring