Colored Text Windows Command Line

Recently I'm messing around with colors in the terminal.

I'm using a sample program from here to test this out in different consoles.

In the Windows Terminal from the Microsoft Store, you can see colors:

Below is the exact same program, but in cmd.exe in which you can't see the colors.

In the same exact console however, when I run the command gcc I do get additional colors (white and red, in fact):

Now my question is, what does gcc do differently, to still be able to print colored text? I can't find any other way to get colored text on the console than written on the linked site above.

This question can help you:

• Color console in ANSI C?
• Can I easily change the colour of text output to the Windows Console from a C Program
• C color text in terminal applications in windows

This is the list for functions you needed (in this example we use red in green):

• For printing one or more character: use GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo and pass the lpConsoleScreenBufferInfo->dwCursorPosition to WriteConsoleOutputAttribute() and then use the WriteConsoleOutputCharacter with the same length passed to nLength. Code:

    HANDLE hStdOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO consoleBuffer;
    GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo (hStdOut, &consoleBuffer);
    const char *string = "AABBCCDDEEFFGG";
    int length = strlen(string);
    DWORD written;
    WriteConsoleOutputAttribute(hStdOut, (WORD*)(FOREGROUND_RED | BACKGROUND_GREEN), length, consoleBuffer.dwCursorPosition, &written);
    WriteConsoleOutputCharacter(hStdOut, string, length, consoleBuffer.dwCursorPosition, &written);

• For entire console: system("color 0F") or use GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo and pass the lpConsoleScreenBufferInfo->dwCursorPosition to SetConsoleTextAttribute() function. Code for SetConsoleTextAttribute():

    HANDLE hStdOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO consoleBuffer;
    const char* string = "AABBCCDDEEFFGG";
    int length = strlen(string);
    DWORD written;
    GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(hStdOut, &consoleBuffer);
    SetConsoleTextAttribute(hStdOut, FOREGROUND_RED | BACKGROUND_GREEN);
    WriteConsoleOutputCharacter(hStdOut, string, length, consoleBuffer.dwCursorPosition, &written);
    SetConsoleTextAttribute(hStdOut, FOREGROUND_BLUE | FOREGROUND_GREEN | FOREGROUND_RED | 0);

Note: You can use WriteConsole() instead of using WriteConsoleOutputCharacter() function. Don't forget to restore the mode!