Coloured texted in console/terminal

Question

Using ncurses in C++, how would I colour my text in a console/terminal without breaking MinGW support? Are there any other libraries that can do this? I know that you can do it with ASCII characters, but this isn't fully supported. I don't want to use the Windows API.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 20 '11 at 18:05

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The discussion in the other answer is regarding Windows, so for the benefit of Win readers, I'm leaving this answer even though it is not cross-platform.

The Old New Thing blog covers some of the Win32 API that can be used to change text color in the console. See FillConsoleOutputAttribute and Console Screen Buffers.

answered Apr 20 '11 at 18:05

sean e

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Although I would like it to work on windows as ubuntu is my OS I want to use something ncurses, but I can't find a good example – Will03uk Apr 20 '11 at 18:54

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '11 at 17:48

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Your reference to mingw implies that you expect this to work in a Windows Cmd window. Unfortunately the Cmd window doesn't support color, except globally for the whole window.

answered Apr 20 '11 at 17:48

Mark Ransom

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That's what I thought, would it break the program with ncurses or just show up as black text? – Will03uk Apr 20 '11 at 17:50
@Will03uk I've never tried ncurses on Windows so I don't know, sorry. – Mark Ransom Apr 20 '11 at 17:54
@Will03uk, my answer might not be correct. It appears that there's a direct interface to the console which does allow color coding, and I'm guessing ncurses for Windows would take advantage of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Windows_and_DOS – Mark Ransom Apr 20 '11 at 18:00
Maybe this is of interest: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/899341/print-coloured-text-to-console-in-c (*shameless plug*) – Skurmedel Apr 20 '11 at 18:57
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@Skurmedel, your solution looks good for the Windows case but the original question is for a cross-platform solution. – Mark Ransom Apr 20 '11 at 19:54
@Mark Ransom: I am blind as a bat :) – Skurmedel Apr 20 '11 at 20:41
@Skurmedel that's a windows way of using colour. I want it to work and windows MAC and Linux – Will03uk Apr 20 '11 at 21:30

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 20 '11 at 19:14

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I can't speak for NCurses, but I have used PDCurses to do color under winXP/MSVC 6, WIN7/MSVC 2010 in a console application.

answered Apr 20 '11 at 19:14

EvilTeach

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I don't understand your question. – EvilTeach Apr 20 '11 at 21:12
Stuff I wrote, using he PDCurses functions. – EvilTeach Apr 21 '11 at 01:11
What was the exact code you wrote; PDCurses should be, as far as I believe, just about compatible, so what PDCurses code did you use?? – Will03uk Apr 21 '11 at 18:14

Coloured texted in console/terminal

3 Answers3