----

-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!