windows - colorful text using printf in C

Question

I was wondering how can I print colorful text in the console? I use eclipse win64 OS. Does it have to do with the compiler? Can anyone give a simple example in C with just a hello world text in red or whatever?

Answer 1

I know that this is incredibly easy to do in C++, but I found this for you to look at in C:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>   // WinApi header

int main()
{
  HANDLE  hConsole;
    int k;

  hConsole = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

  // you can loop k higher to see more color choices
  for(k = 1; k < 255; k++)
  {
    SetConsoleTextAttribute(hConsole, k);
    printf("%3d  %s
", k, "I want to be nice today!");
  }

  getchar();  // wait
  return 0;
}

All of the comments will help you to find your way through the code - hope it helps!