Options for PHP CLI on windows

Question

I'm working with the PHP CLI on windows at the moment to write some small desktop command-line apps.

I wanted to know if and how it may be possible to:

• Clear the screen (cls would be the normal command but exec() won't work with it)
• Change the color, change the color of parts of the output (seen this in programs before)
• Make the command line horizontally bigger - things quickly get unreadable

Is any of the above possible from inside a PHP script?

Answer 1

On Windows, in the standard CLI prompt, you cannot output in colour (as in the answer by Spudley).

You can change the size of the window as a user by right-clicking the command window's title bar and selecting Properties, then ammending values in the Layout tab. I do not think it is possible to ammend the width of the CLI within PHP.

You can check the width of the CLI window on Windows using the function I wrote here