Creating a Hyperlink from Command Line Output on a Terminal
The Command Hostnamectl, When Executed with No Argument, Will Dump a Bunch of Information to the Terminal. One of That Is the Operating System Line as Shown in...
The command hostnamectl, when executed with no argument, will dump a bunch of information to the terminal. One of that is the Operating System line as shown in the sample output below:
$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: xxxxxx
Icon name: computer-laptop
Chassis: laptop
Machine ID: e8..43
Boot ID: 7b..2a
Operating System: Ubuntu 21.10
Kernel: Linux 5.13.0-28-generic
Architecture: x86-64
Hardware Vendor: XXXXXX
Hardware Model: XXXXXX
However, the output "Ubuntu 21.10" is underlined like a hyperlink and when you Ctrl+click, it will open a web browser with the following link address: .
How is this accomplished? What are the terminal commands (escape sequences?) that I need to output from a text based program or script to create such a hyperlink on the terminal?
1 Answer
This information was not present in Ask Ubuntu, but I found the answer in another site:
The escape sequence to create the above link is:
printf '\e]8;; 21.10\e]8;;\e\\\n'
The general format is:
The hyperlink open sequence starts with
- the
\e]8escape sequence (ESC, ], and 8), - the params,
- the target URI, and
- the closing
\e\escape sequence (ESC and \)
where params is optional: \e]8;params;URI\e\\
Then comes the content that will be painted as hyperlink.
The hyperlink is closed with the same escape sequence, omitting params and the URI, but keeping the separators: \e]8;;\e\\
As a bonus to this answer, I suggest you use the following alias in your ~/.bash_aliases file:
alias ll="LC_COLLATE=C ls --hyperlink=auto --group-directories-first --color=auto -alF"
Here, the --hyperlink argument will direct the ls command to automatically create hyperlinks for file names on terminal output, so that when they are Ctrl+clicked they will open in Nautilus or the associated application.
David Miller brings 15 years of experience in global economics, personal finance strategy, and market dynamics. He specializes in turning complex economic trends into actionable insights for everyday readers.
