rang - Colors for your Terminal¶

Note

This is an adaptation of original rang documentation (see rang). The code now is not header only as the original one to avoid windows header conflict in complex projects.

Example usage

#include "rang.hpp"

using namespace std;
using namespace rang;

int main()
{
    cout << "Plain old text"
         << style::bold << "Rang styled text!!"
         << style::reset << endl;
}

Rang uses iostream objects - cout/clog/cerr to apply attributes to output text. Since rang aims to support both windows and unix like systems, it takes care of the os specific details and tries to provide a uniform interface. Due to incompatiblities b/w different OS versions, not all kinds of attributes are supported on every system so rang will try to skip the ones which might produce garbage(instead of pushing random ANSI escape codes on your streams). Detection of tty is also handled internally so you don’t need to check if application user might redirect output to a file.

Need support for non-ansi terminals? Check outTermdbwhich supports virtually all terminals and their capablities.

Apart from setting text attributes, you can also ask rang to override its default behaviour through these methods -

void rang::setControlMode(rang::control);

where rang::control takes - control::Auto - Automatically detects whether terminal supports color or not(Default) - control::Off - Turn off colors completely - control::Force - Force colors even if terminal doesn’t supports them or output is redirected to non-terminal

void rang::setWinTermMode(rang::winTerm);

where rang::winTerm takes - winTerm::Auto - Checks for newer windows and picks Ansi otherwise falls back to Native(Default) - winTerm::Native - This method is supported in all versions of windows but supports less attributes - winTerm::Ansi - This method is supported in newer versions of windows and supports rich variety of attributes

Supported attributes with their compatiblity are listed below -

Text Styles:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::style::bold`	yes	yes
`rang::style::dim`	yes	no
`rang::style::italic`	yes	no
`rang::style::underline`	yes	no
`rang::style::blink`	no	no
`rang::style::rblink`	no	no
`rang::style::reversed`	yes	yes
`rang::style::conceal`	maybe	yes
`rang::style::crossed`	yes	no

Text Color:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::fg::black`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::red`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::green`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::yellow`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::blue`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::magenta`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::cyan`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::gray`	yes	yes

Background Color:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::bg::black`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::red`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::green`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::yellow`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::blue`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::magenta`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::cyan`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::gray`	yes	yes

Bright Foreground Color:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::fgB::black`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::red`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::green`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::yellow`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::blue`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::magenta`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::cyan`	yes	yes
`rang::fgB::gray`	yes	yes

Bright Background Color:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::bgB::black`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::red`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::green`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::yellow`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::blue`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::magenta`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::cyan`	yes	yes
`rang::bgB::gray`	yes	yes

Reset Styles/Colors:

Code	Linux/Win/Others	Old Win
`rang::style::reset`	yes	yes
`rang::fg::reset`	yes	yes
`rang::bg::reset`	yes	yes

My terminal is not detected/gets garbage output!

Check your env variable TERM’s value. Then open an issue here and make sure to mention TERM’s value along with your terminal name.

Redirecting ``cout``/``cerr``/``clog`` rdbuf?

Rang doesn’t interfere if you try to redirect cout/cerr/clog to somewhere else and leaves the decision to the library user. Make sure you’ve read this conversation and check out the example code here.