This source and application has been released into the public domain by Simon Cooke
(spectecjr@getwired.com)
It is provided as is, and no liability is assumed by the author for any problems it may cause.
It appears to work fine 🙂
SetColor
A Win32 console-mode app that allows the user to set the color of following output text.
This is somewhat better than the COLOR batch command, which forces the entire console window
to change color.
Handy for colorizing batch scripts, and signalling error conditions.
Files
- SetColor.cpp – source code for setcolor utility.
- SetColor.exe – setcolor utility
Usage
The app is called with a two-character parameter.
setcolor <foregroundcolor><backgroundcolor>
The parameter is:
- 0 Black
- 1 Blue
- 2 Red
- 3 Magenta
- 4 Green
- 5 Cyan
- 6 Yellow
- 7 Gray
- 8 Dark Gray
- 9 Bright Blue
- a Bright Red
- b Bright Magenta
- c Bright Green
- d Bright Cyan
- e Bright Yellow
- f Bright White
If foreground = background, the command does nothing.
Examples
c:/>setcolor fa
– all text output following the command will appear in bright white on a red background.
c:/>setcolor D0
– all text output will be in bright cyan, on a black background.
Compilation notes
Does not use the Microsoft C runtime library for space reasons. Imports kernel32.lib ONLY (ignores default libraries); compiled with
minimize size, function level linking, debug output as map-file only, release mode turned on. Linker was set to use 32 byte alignment
for size reasons [see notes]; compiled executable is 2Kb long.
Note: No usage information is compiled into the app to minimize size; static data entails another segment in the generated executable, which
takes up space. Read The Frickin’ Manual 🙂
Notes
May not work as-is on Windows 98; will work fine on Windows 2000/Windows NT4.0. This is because it was compiled with an alignment
setting of 32 to minimize the size of the final application.