textcolor

Go Up to conio.h Index

Header File

conio.h

Category

Console I/O Routines

Prototype

void textcolor(int newcolor);

Description

Selects new character color in text mode.

Note: Do not use this function in Win32 GUI applications.

textcolor selects the foreground character color. This function works for the console output functions. newcolor selects the new foreground color. You can set newcolor to an integer as given in the table below, or to one of the symbolic constants defined in conio.h. If you use symbolic constants, you must include conio.h.

Once you have called textcolor, all subsequent functions using direct video output (such as cprintf) will use newcolor. textcolor does not affect any characters currently onscreen.

The following table lists the allowable colors (as symbolic constants) and their numeric values:

BLACK	0
BLUE	1
GREEN	2
CYAN	3
RED	4
MAGENTA	5
BROWN	6
LIGHTGRAY	7
DARKGRAY	8
LIGHTBLUE	9
LIGHTGREEN	10
LIGHTCYAN	11
LIGHTRED	12
LIGHTMAGENTA	13
YELLOW	14
WHITE	15
BLINK	128

You can make the characters blink by adding 128 to the foreground color. The predefined constant BLINK exists for this purpose.

For example:

textcolor(CYAN + BLINK);

Note: Some monitors do not recognize the intensity signal used to create the eight "light" colors (8-15). On such monitors, the light colors are displayed as their "dark" equivalents (0-7). Also, systems that do not display in color can treat these numbers as shades of one color, special patterns, or special attributes (such as underlined, bold, italics, and so on). Exactly what you will see on such systems depends on your hardware.

Return Value

None.

Example

#include <conio.h>

int main(void)
{
  int i, j;

  clrscr();
  for (i=0; i<9; i++)
  {
      for (j=0; j<80; j++)
         cprintf("C");
      cprintf("\r\n");
      textcolor(i+1);
      textbackground(i);
  }

  return 0;
}

Portability

POSIX	Win32	ANSI C	ANSI C++
	+