Cursor tricks using VT100 and ANSI escape codes

Copy and paste the commands below into your BASH shell for some neat effects. If you want a better explanation of how this works, you can watch this video.

Cursor Bounce

Cursor will bounce off the walls of your terminal. Try resizing your terminal while its in the middle of the terminal.

x=1;y=1;xd=1;yd=1;while true;do if [[ $x == $LINES || $x == 0 ]]; then xd=$(( $xd *-1 )) ; fi ; if [[ $y == $COLUMNS || $y == 0 ]]; then yd=$(( $yd * -1 )) ; fi ; x=$(( $x + $xd )); y=$(( $y + $yd )); printf "\33[%s;%sH" $x $y; sleep 0.02 ;done

Rainbow Cursor Worm

Cursor leaves a rainbow trail behind it.

a=1;x=1;y=1;xd=1;yd=1;while true;do if [[ $x == $LINES || $x == 0 ]]; then xd=$(( $xd *-1 )) ; fi ; if [[ $y == $COLUMNS || $y == 0 ]]; then yd=$(( $yd * -1 )) ; fi ; x=$(( $x + $xd )); y=$(( $y + $yd )); printf "\33[%s;%sH\33[48;5;%sm \33[0m" $x $y $(($a%199+16)) ;a=$(( $a + 1 )) ; sleep 0.001 ;done

Terminal Screen Saver

Full terminal color gradient effects. The modulus operations keep the colors cycling a bit and makes sure it repeats itself after producing some horizontal lines. Probably could be reworked to be a bit better, this is an exercise left to the hacker.

j=0;a=1;x=1;y=1;xd=1;yd=1;while true;do for i in {1..2000} ; do if [[ $x == $LINES || $x == 0 ]]; then xd=$(( $xd *-1 )) ; fi ; if [[ $y == $COLUMNS || $y == 0 ]]; then yd=$(( $yd * -1 )) ; fi ; x=$(( $x + $xd )); y=$(( $y + $yd )); printf "\33[%s;%sH\33[48;5;%sm . \33[0m" $x $y $(( $a % 8 + 16 + $j % 223 )) ;a=$(( $a + 1 )) ; done ; x=$(( x%$COLUMNS + 1 )) ; j=$(( $j + 8 )) ;done

As always, the hacker is encouraged to play with the values and create new effects.

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Created: 2011-11-18

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