Colorama for Python, Not returning colored print lines on Windows

Question

I've installed colorama for python. I've imported the module as follows:

import colorama from colorama import init init() from colorama import Fore, Back, Style  print Fore.RED + "My Text is Red" 

and it returns the ANSI charaters....

esc[31mMy Text is Red 

This isn`t what I expected. Am I doing something wrong.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I had this same issue on Windows 7 x64, I finally got the colors working without having to install anything new just by adding the argument convert=True to the init call.

from colorama import init, Fore, Back, Style  init(convert=True)  print(Fore.RED + 'some red text') 

Answer 2

I've never had success getting colors working in Windows cmd.exe without patching it with Ansicon. After patching, ANSI color codes will work without needing to use something like colorama (which didn't work for me either).

To patch cmd.exe with Ansicon, do the following:

1. Download Ansicon from https://github.com/adoxa/ansicon/downloads and unzip it into a directory with no spaces
2. Use a cmd prompt and navigate to where you unzipped it.
3. CD into the x64 directory (unless you have a 32bit machine, then use the x86 one)
4. Type ansicon.exe –i
5. Open a new cmd prompt

via: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4749307/191902

Also, if you have an NVidia graphics card, you might need to set the environment variable "ANSICON_EXC" to "nvd3d9wrap.dll".