NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c++-part1/5397

Text File | 1996-08-05 | 1.8 KB | 53 lines

Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Path: netcom.com!milyng
From: [e-mail] (Mikael Lyngvig)
Subject: Re: Escape Sequences in c++
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Hacker's Paradise, Inc.
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.7
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 05:04:37 GMT

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] says...

>        Does anyone know how to use the Ansi.sys escape sequences in
>c++? Specifically the cursor-control sequences. Any help would be
>greatly appreciated.

Assuming you have ANSI.SYS installed, you can just write them to 'stdout'
(the default output device when you use C's standard I/O library):

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
   FILE *pOutput;

   ...

   printf("\x1B[1;33;44m%s: %s\x1B[0m\n", DateStr, EventStr);

   pOutput = stdout;
   fprintf(pOutput, "\x1B[1;33;44m%s: %s\x1B[0m\n", DateStr, EventStr);
}

I think the escape sequence shown displays the current date and a so-called
event (a string) using white ink on blue paper (mm.dd.yy: string).  \x1B is
the Escape character that marks the beginning of an ANSI escape sequence and
so on.  The example mixes hexadecimal C escape sequences (\xNN) with clear
text characters ([), but it would probably be a good idea to isolate it
somehow and have specific functions such as "SetInkColor(WHITE);
SetPaperColor(BLUE);" etc., so you can easily change it to not use ANSI later
on (when you discover that very few systems support ANSI and not all users
have ANSI.SYS installed :).

This is code from a program I wrote years back, but it illustrates the
concept; the two statements are functionally identical (I recommend using the
second method because it gives you the option of dumping the stuff to a file
for debugging purposes etc.).


Mikael