Member Avatar for phil750

Say i just do a simple printf statement

printf("i want this text to be different color > %s", thisbit);

i want whatever i print out at the %s (the string) to be different color.
Im sure it only something little that why i ask.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Adak

Dani AI

Generated

Good summary so far — 's ANSI approach is exactly what most Linux terminals accept, and was right to flag Windows as a different case. For portability and reliability, avoid sprinkling raw escape bytes everywhere: detect whether stdout is a terminal, provide a small wrapper, and either emit ANSI (POSIX) or call the Win32 console API (Windows).

Basic portability checklist

  • Only emit color when the output is a TTY (POSIX: isatty(fileno(stdout)); Windows: _isatty(_fileno(stdout))).
  • Respect user/pipe contexts (piped output usually should not contain color) and conventions like a NO_COLOR environment variable.
  • Prefer a tiny wrapper so you can switch implementations without changing call sites.

Windows notes and example

  • Historically the Win32 API (SetConsoleTextAttribute) is the safe way to change colors. On modern Windows 10+ you can enable Virtual Terminal Processing so the console understands ANSI escapes; otherwise use the console attribute API and restore the original attributes when done.

Example: enable ANSI processing (Windows 10+) — call once before printing ANSI sequences

#include <windows.h>

int enable_vt_mode(void) {
    HANDLE hOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    if (hOut == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return 0;
    DWORD mode = 0;
    if (!GetConsoleMode(hOut, &mode)) return 0;
#ifndef ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING
#define ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING 0x0004
#endif
    mode |= ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING;
    return SetConsoleMode(hOut, mode) != 0;
}

Fallback: use GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo / SetConsoleTextAttribute to change and then restore attributes

#include <windows.h>

WORD save_console_attrs(void) {
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;
    HANDLE hOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    if (!GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(hOut, &csbi)) return 0;
    return csbi.wAttributes;
}
void set_console_attr(WORD attr) {
    SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), attr);
}

Troubleshooting: if colors don't appear, confirm the terminal supports them, check TERM/terminal emulator settings, ensure output is not redirected, and always restore console attributes so the shell is not left colored. For more robust handling across many terminals, consider a small terminfo/ncurses-based layer or an existing cross-platform library.

Member Avatar for phil750

Never mind find out.

For anyone else who was curious. Type one of these before the text you want to
right.

\033[22;30m - black
\033[22;31m - red
\033[22;32m - green
\033[22;33m - brown
\033[22;34m - blue
\033[22;35m - magenta
\033[22;36m - cyan
\033[22;37m - gray
\033[01;30m - dark gray
\033[01;31m - light red
\033[01;32m - light green
\033[01;33m - yellow
\033[01;34m - light blue
\033[01;35m - light magenta
\033[01;36m - light cyan
\033[01;37m - white

e.g. for light blue

printf(" \033[01;34m Hello World");
Edited by phil750 because: n/a
Member Avatar for Adak

The codes shown above this, require that your system has the ANSI.sys driver loaded. (shades of DOS!)

I don't have it on my WindowsXP, system, so it won't work for me.

If you're working or writing code for a Windows system, I strongly suggest you use the Windows API for this, instead.

Member Avatar for phil750

I do all my programming on Linux :) worked fine for me :P

Member Avatar for Adak

Then your distro has a version of ansi.sys installed. This was heavily used in the early days of DOS. I used it also.

I'll have to see if I can install it into my WindowsXP system, although Windows does have it's own API for this. I believe it's called SetConsoleTextColor().

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