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+---
+title: "Tmux Session Coloring"
+date: 2014-02-24T00:00:00Z
+comments: true
+tags: ["shell scripting", "tmux"]
+---
+
+Recently, I've really gotten into tmux for managing all my terminal sessions/windows. Not so much for the panes, but more for keeping a highly contextual environment per project or task.
+
+As the number of sessions grew, they became difficult to tell apart. For a few days now, I've had the idea of hashing the name of the session into a unique color, so that every session had its own `status-bg` color.
+
+First, the `tmuxHashColor` function:
+
+```sh
+tmuxHashColor() {
+  local hsh=$(echo $1 | cksum | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
+  local num=$(expr $hsh % 255)
+  echo "colour$num"
+}
+```
+
+In our `ns` function (new session), we hash the supplied session name to a color, then use `tmux send-keys` to set its `status-bg` color to it:
+
+```sh
+ns() {
+  if [ -z $1 ]; then
+    1=$(basename $(pwd))
+  fi
+  tmux new-session -d -s $1
+  local color=$(tmuxHashColor $1)
+  tmux send-keys -t $1 "tmux set-option status-bg $color" C-m
+  tmux send-keys -t $1 "clear" C-m
+  tmux attach -t $1
+}
+
+```
+
+Now every session has it's own distinct `status-bg` color!