C programming language question

[ironzombie99]

This may seem like an off the wall question but i was wondering how to format/change the text color of a block of text that is printed to the screen in the compiled program (not talking about the colored syntax options in some editors) I am using Vim on a linux machine to write my code but I also have access to VB6 if it matters.

[alfie2]

you can use 'escape sequences' code " ESC = "\033" under VT100 terminal specs.
(what is VT100, you asked, it was a term spec for DEC's VAX/VMS Mini-computers; very popular in the 1960s-80s, DEC was brought by COMPAQ)
(if anyone knows what VAX is then he/she is as old as me...hehehe)

example:

To print "Hello, world.\!" in red YOU would write the printf statement to:

printf("\033[22;31mHello, world!");

Note: this will change all text output to RED after that; you have to do a "\033[0m" or another "esc seq." to change it.

==========================================
All the VT100 colors are:
\033[22;30m - black
\033[22;31m - red
\033[22;32m - green
\033[22;33m - brown
\033[22;34m - blue
\033[22;35m - magenta
\033[22;36m - cyan
\033[22;37m - gray
\033[01;30m - dark gray
\033[01;31m - light red
\033[01;32m - light green
\033[01;33m - yellow
\033[01;34m - light blue
\033[01;35m - light magenta
\033[01;36m - light cyan
\033[01;37m - white
==========================================


Note: you can also use the ESC sequence to move the cursor anywhere in the terminal.

If you want portability use ncurses/xcurses libraries in LINUX's GCC.
VBasic has color text functions built-in, see help.

[ironzombie99]

thanks alfie2, it works perfectly.