Using pcregrep with --color option - only highlight non captured expression?

Question

I would like to use pcregrep with its --color option to highlight text that follows a particular pattern:

e.g. if file.txt contains:

bob says hi
chloe says hello

then running:

pcregrep --color '(?:says)(.*)' file.txt

prints

bob says hi
chloe says hello

but what I want is:

bob says hi
chloe says hello

Is there a way to use pcregrep and have it only highlight text that follows a particular regular expression?

Answer 1

The answer appears to be no, you cannot color only part of a match, even if it's non-capturing with (?:..) as in your example.

But if you instead use a positive lookbehind assertion, which anchors the match but is not part of it, you can achieve what you want:

pcregrep --color '(?<=says)(.*)' data

Result: