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So You Like Color--The Mysterious ^[[ Characters

Oct 11, 2005  By Pradeep Padala
 in
Learn how to make the text in your xterm blink magenta against a cyan background--even in your C programs.
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Bypass the need for CTRL-V ESC

Themilkman's picture
Submitted by Themilkman (not verified) on Tue, 07/31/2007 - 12:30.

If you want to omit the CTRL-V ESC key sequence you can use \033 instead.

So the lines would read echo "\033[0;31;40m In Color"
and echo "\033[0;37;40m"

This makes it easier to type and to have in scripts.

Excellent post

Chris Hampson's picture
Submitted by Chris Hampson (not verified) on Wed, 05/30/2007 - 05:35.

A fantastic post, I'm just about to do some scripts involving interpreting these colour codes from the logs from the screen utility, this page was invaluable.

Keep up the good work :-)

Cool Tutorial, but...

Matt Cudmore's picture
Submitted by Matt Cudmore (not verified) on Fri, 06/16/2006 - 15:53.

Cool tutorial, but, I noticed that in the two coding examples you #define BLINK as 4, when it's actually supposed to be '5'

It's just a small type-o, but I thought I'd let you know just incase someone (such as myself) tries to learn from one of the examples without first looking to the list that correctly defines BLINK as 5.

Inspired me to write a library

John Holden's picture
Submitted by John Holden (not verified) on Sat, 12/03/2005 - 22:41.

It's been a slow day before exams started, so I went and wrote a C header I've named SimpleColors after reading this article: CVS (tarball). Great information!

This link is broken!

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/08/2007 - 15:31.

This link is broken!

awesome

herbmaster's picture
Submitted by herbmaster (not verified) on Sun, 10/23/2005 - 21:53.

OMG, this is awesome. I've been wondering for about three years how to do colors in c(besides using ncurses). I just happened to be bored and decided to checkout lj's website since I have a subscription and really like the mag.

I think the editors are retarded for not putting this stuff in the magazine. I mean, I have to look at a computer monitor 12 hours a day and I'd really rather go home and read this stuff from the print mag.

But anyway, awsome article Pradeep. Thanks!

bugs in code

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 10/12/2005 - 08:44.

In your while loop, the second and third if statements are incorrect. It looks like you copied/pasted the first statement and did not change the conditions -- you are comparing attr when it should be fg and then bg.

RE: bugs in code

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 10/12/2005 - 08:45.

Sorry, forgot to mention that is for the "Demo of Colors" program.

Will Linux make computers soo

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/11/2005 - 06:12.

Will Linux make computers soon?
http://blog.detectivemarketing.com/2005/10/will-linux-make-computers-soo...

LINUX is no brand

webdesign hamburg's picture
Submitted by webdesign hamburg (not verified) on Tue, 10/11/2005 - 10:36.

and never will be. So Linux as a organization could not exist. And you cannot build real material things over the web, cause your hands doesnt fit into the cables :)

Re:

A@A's picture
Submitted by A@A (not verified) on Tue, 10/11/2005 - 14:42.

In USSR was not any commercical company. But this counrty was better than USA.
Communism rulezzz!

Such a thing could be

gentoo user's picture
Submitted by gentoo user (not verified) on Fri, 10/14/2005 - 00:55.

Such a thing could be written by the person who never lived in both countries nor US nor USSR. It seems the author of the previous comment is a teen who grown up in Ukraine as an independent country and considers that USSR was a communist state... Funny :)

look it up

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/24/2005 - 02:23.

Actually the Ukraine beeing a part of the USSR is not that long ago! They became independant 1991.

cool article. i finally under

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/11/2005 - 17:08.

cool article. i finally understood colors... although a msg about that it is not possible to paste the escape sequence into your terminal would be good.

But what about outputting to a file?

Boom's picture
Submitted by Boom (not verified) on Fri, 12/16/2005 - 19:33.

Hi, I use escape sequences in my program but then if I redirect the output to a file, I start seeing all these escape characters in there. Is there a way that I can disable this functionality when outputting to a file?

istty

sde's picture
Submitted by sde on Fri, 01/06/2006 - 10:37.

http://www.thinkage.ca/english/gcos/expl/c/lib/istty.html

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