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Asked: 2026-05-14T06:42:51+00:00

I am developing a console application. I need to emulate the way how the

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I am developing a console application. I need to emulate the way how the command line utility behaves when the F7 button is pressed, like shown below:

alt text

Is it possible in C# 2008? If not, is there any workaround available?

Any help much appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    On Windows there is a whole API for writing “Console Mode” applications. It allows you to listen for mouse or keyboard input in an event driven way, and also to set the text foreground and background colours, position the cursor, etc.

    To make a box like the one displayed by CMD.EXE, you use certain special characters to make the border (there are various corner pieces and edge pieces – use the Character Map application to see them all).

    To use the Console API from C# you probably need to use pinvoke, e.g.

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] 
public static extern bool SetConsoleTextAttribute(
                            IntPtr hConsoleOutput, int wAttributes);

    See the docs for SetConsoleTextAttribute to see how to use it to set the colour.

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