Terminal styling (control chars) using the chalk NPM module

Question

Say I have this:

//exp.js
const chalk = require('chalk');
console.log(chalk.red('foobar'));

and then I run at the command line:

node exp.js | cat

In all the cases I have seen, the colors won't show up. Does anyone know why? Is there a way to get the colors to show up? Am I doing something wrong?

My only guess is that the chalk library "turns off" the string styling when the processes are hooked up in a pipe?

For example:

Answer 1

As per the fine manual:

$ node exp.js --color | cat
$ env FORCE_COLOR=1 node exp.js | cat

Or:

//exp.js
process.env.FORCE_COLOR = '1';
const chalk = require('chalk');
console.log(chalk.red('foobar'));