stdlib and colored output in C

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I am making a simple application which requires colored output. How can I make my output colored like emacs and bash do?

I don't care about Windows, as my application is only for UNIX systems.

libc stdio colors c
7 Answers
#include <stdio.h>

#define BLUE(string) "\x1b[34m" string "\x1b[0m"
#define RED(string) "\x1b[31m" string "\x1b[0m"

int main(void)
{
    printf("this is " RED("red") "!\n");

    // a somewhat more complex ...
    printf("this is " BLUE("%s") "!\n","blue");

    return 0;
}

reading Wikipedia:

  • \x1b[0m resets all attributes
  • \x1b[31m sets foreground color to red
  • \x1b[44m would set the background to blue.
  • both : \x1b[31;44m
  • both but inversed : \x1b[31;44;7m
  • remember to reset afterwards \x1b[0m ...
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