coprintf

Colorful printf for C Code ( ascii color only ), decorate your terminal with more colors.

Overview

A light, self-adapting wrapper of printf with several useful features, makes easy work for changing foreground, background and text action ( highlight, underline, blink ... ) . It makes you easy to enable and disable colorizing in your c&cpp's output.

Screenshot

Active

Inactive

Example

set fg to red:

coprintf("^r%s","hello world !");

or

coprintf("^rhello world !");

set fg to red, bg to yellow, action to highlight and underline:

coprintf("^r^Y^h^u%s","hello world !");

set [ red, yellow, highlight & underline ] for "hello", [ cyan, red, reverse ] for "world", [ green, black, blink ] for "!" :

coprintf("^r^Y^h^u%shello^d ^c^R^eworld^d ^g^K^l!");

Please refer to demo.c for more examples:

Install

Simply include the header in your files, like this:

#include "coprintf.h"

Usage

Syntax

Support multi-string in one command:

coprintf("<leader>rHello <leader>bWorld");
ceprintf("<leader>rHello <leader>bWorld");

Support setting foreground, background and action

coprintf("<leader>r<leader>YHello <leader>b<leader>CWorld");
ceprintf("<leader>r<leader>YHello <leader>b<leader>CWorld");

Support status switch via macro:

macro CO_PRINTF_INACTIVE defined ?	colorize
yes	not colorful
no	colorful

Support status automatical switch via output fd:

output fd	colorize
not tty	not colorful
tty	colorful

What's <Leader> Character ?

We define a character as the <leader> which will combine the mode character as an escape character.

The default <leader> is "^", but you can customize it to any char you want.

Mode flag

Foreground color flag

mode	color
<leader>k	black
<leader>r	red
<leader>g	green
<leader>y	yellow
<leader>b	blue
<leader>p	purple
<leader>c	cyan
<leader>w	write

Background color flag

mode	color
<leader>K	black
<leader>R	red
<leader>G	green
<leader>Y	yellow
<leader>B	blue
<leader>P	purple
<leader>C	cyan
<leader>W	write

Action flag

mode	action
<leader>d	done
<leader>h	highlight
<leader>u	underline
<leader>e	reverse
<leader>l	blink
<leader>v	invisible

The mode control formats are easily memorized:

1. Foreground : almost the lowercase of color mode head, "black" is exceptive.

2. Background : almost the uppercase of color mode head, "black" is exceptive.

3. Controling : almost the lowercase of mode head, with some exceptions.

Macro

You can customize the below Macros in coprintf.h:

CO_PRINTF_INACTIVE

Default: not set.

coprintf will be disabled if CO_PRINTF_INACTIVE is set in coprintf.h like this:

#define CO_PRINTF_INACTIVE

Or compiling with option like this:

-DCO_PRINTF_INACTIVE

CO_PRINTF_LEADER

Default: '^'

The <leader> char can be customized by CO_PRINTF_LEADER:

/* set '#' as the <leader> char*/
#define CO_PRINTF_LEADER	'#'

Advanced

• coprintf is self-adapting. When the colorful output is redirected to other file, coprintf will disabled color automatically.
• Action flag <leader>d will turn off all settings ( fg, bg and action ), Thus, in single command, you have to set flags again to make it work well once there are other strings after <leader>d.
• If you want to print the itself, try <leader><leader>; If the char after leader isn't defined as an escape char, it will be ignored.
• It's not necessary use <leader>d at the begin/end of commands, coprintf do it automatically.
• Actions can overlaied.

What's more

This project is really same as cecho, which supports similar functions to echo in shell script.