Currently I have a command-line application in C called btcwatch. It has a -C option that it can receive as an argument that compares the current price of Bitcoin with a price that was stored beforehand with -S. Example output with this option is:$ btcwatch -vC  # -v = verbosebuy: UP $ 32.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 132.000000)sell: UP $ 16.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 116.000000)The dilemma is whether to use colour for the UP or DOWN string (green and red, respectively). Most command-line applications I know of (apart from git) stay away from colour in their output. In my desire for btcwatch to look and be quite standard (use of getopt, Makefiles, etc), I'm not sure if colour would look out of place in this situation.
When is it appropriate to use colour in a command-line application?
coding standards;command line;bash;color
The appropriate thing to do is to make the coloring optional, default to off and control it via a command-line flag. That way, people who don't like it or whose terminal doesn't support it aren't affected, people who like it can use it, and people who really, really like it can define an alias or shortcut to predefine the option. Everybody's happy.