mupfdev / cprintf

Portable C Library for printing colored text on the terminal with the C formatting style.

cprintf

Portable C Library for printing colored text on the terminal with the C formatting style. Usage:

cprintf("Hello, %fg world!\n", "green text!!!");

Don't want for the library to mess up with your %? Use this:

cprintf("Hello, \\%fg", "world!");

Want for the library to act like chalk? Use this!

char result[100];

if (cprintf_ansi(result, 100, "Hello, %fg", "world!") == 0) {
    /* error handling here. 
       not necessary if you don't use
       combined format specifiers. */
}

Build

• POSIX (GCC)

make

• POSIX (Clang)

make CC=clang

• Windows (MinGW/GCC)

make WIN=yes

• Windows (MSVC)

nmake /nologo /f VisualStudioMakefile

• Windows (Clang)

This one must be the clang bundled with Visual Studio.

nmake /nologo /f VisualStudioMakefile CC=clang

Table of formats

Format name	Description	Extra notes
%fk	Changes the text color to black.	Windows builds does not support this format.
%fr	Changes the text color to red.	-
%fg	Changes the text color to green.	-
%fy	Changes the text color to yellow.	-
%fb	Changes the text color to blue.	-
%fm	Changes the text color to magenta.	-
%fc	Changes the text color to cyan.	-
%fw	Changes the text color to white.	-
%bk	Changes the background color to black.	Windows builds does not support this format.
%br	Changes the background color to red.	-
%bg	Changes the background color to green.	-
%by	Changes the background color to yellow.	-
%bb	Changes the background color to blue.	-
%bm	Changes the background color to magenta.	-
%bc	Changes the background color to cyan.	-
%bw	Changes the background color to white.	-
%i	Inverts the background and text color.	In windows, this is an alias for %bw.
%u	Adds an underline.	In windows, if no color is provided (e.g: only %u), no visible text will appear.

Bold

You can make a text bold or background color brighter by capitalizing the format specifier. Example:

• %FR will output a bold, red text.
• %BB will output a bright, blue background.

Combining formats

You can combine multiple formats too, with %{...}. Example:

• %{fr,u} combines %fr (red text) and %u (underline/underscore).

Invalid format specifier(s) will cause undefined behaviour. Repeated combinations, or more than 3 combinations will cause undefined behaviour in POSIX builds.