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C++ Different Text Colour

Muhasaresa (74)
Hi everyone,

I'm making a console app in C++ (MSVS 2010) and I was wondering how I could make different sentences or letters be a different colour all on one screen, for example:

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string a;
string b = "You typed in: ";

cin << a; // white text blue backround which is system("color 1f");//
cout >> b; cout >> a; //string b to be   system("color 1f"); but string a to be   system("color 1a");


When I use system("color 1a"); it changes everything, so how can I just limit the command to a string?

Thanks for any help,

Muhasaresa
Last edited on
hanst99 (2869)
You can't, at least not like that (you could attempt to use ANSI control characters, but IIRC windows doesn't support those). I think you can do this with the WinAPI though.

SetConsoleTextAttribute was the function called I believe, but I don't use the WinAPI myself so I don't know more than that.
Nisheeth (545)
Yup, that's the function for it. Here's how I did it (and put it in a custom header file so that I don't have to write this function every time I want to use it).

Also, I am not sure this is the best method of doing this over there...

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enum Color_t {Gray, White ,DarkRed,Red,DarkBlue, Blue, DarkGreen,Green,DarkCyan,Cyan,DarkMagenta,Magenta,DarkYellow,Yellow, None};

HANDLE Global::hStdout = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

void SetColor(Color_t Fore)
{
	WORD fore;

	switch(Fore)
	{
	case 0:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_GREEN;
		break;
	case 1:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_GREEN|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 2:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED;
		break;
	case 3:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 4:
		fore = FOREGROUND_BLUE;
		break;
	case 5:
		fore = FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 6:
		fore = FOREGROUND_GREEN;
		break;
	case 7:
		fore = FOREGROUND_GREEN|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 8:
		fore = FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_GREEN;
		break;
	case 9:
		fore = FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_GREEN|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 10:
		fore =  FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_RED;
		break;
	case 11:
		fore = FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	case 12:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_GREEN;
		break;
	case 13:
		fore = FOREGROUND_RED|FOREGROUND_GREEN|FOREGROUND_INTENSITY;
		break;
	}

	SetConsoleTextAttribute(Global::hStdout,fore);
}


Reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686047(v=VS.85).aspx

EDIT:
Also about how to use it:
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SetColor(Blue);
cout << a;
SetColour (Green);
cout << b;

Will set the Colour of a to Blue and of b to green.

You can use any of the 13 colours in the enum (None won't do anything here, so ignoring it is the best option. I had it for another function that serves a similar function.)
Last edited on
Muhasaresa (74)
Thanks

:D
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