colorful text using printf in C

Question

I was wondering how can I print colorful text in the console? I use eclipse win64 OS. Does it have to do with the compiler? Can anyone give a simple example in C with just a hello world text in red or whatever?

Answer 1

I know that this is incredibly easy to do in C++, but I found this for you to look at in C:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>   // WinApi header

int main()
{
  HANDLE  hConsole;
    int k;

  hConsole = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

  // you can loop k higher to see more color choices
  for(k = 1; k < 255; k++)
  {
    SetConsoleTextAttribute(hConsole, k);
    printf("%3d  %s\n", k, "I want to be nice today!");
  }

  getchar();  // wait
  return 0;
}

All of the comments will help you to find your way through the code - hope it helps!

Answer 2

If you want to print colored text in Windows console, you will have to use Windows API. ANSI.sys support is no longer present in Windows.

In Linux you can still use ANSI escape sequences to color text.