Question

Is there a way to print colored output using iostream and Xcode? I’d like to be able to, for example, print Hello World! with Hello red, World blue and ! yellow. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You need the terminal color codes. For linux it’s the following (your system might be different, look it up):

//the following are UBUNTU/LINUX, and MacOS ONLY terminal color codes.
#define RESET   "\033[0m"
#define BLACK   "\033[30m"      /* Black */
#define RED     "\033[31m"      /* Red */
#define GREEN   "\033[32m"      /* Green */
#define YELLOW  "\033[33m"      /* Yellow */
#define BLUE    "\033[34m"      /* Blue */
#define MAGENTA "\033[35m"      /* Magenta */
#define CYAN    "\033[36m"      /* Cyan */
#define WHITE   "\033[37m"      /* White */
#define BOLDBLACK   "\033[1m\033[30m"      /* Bold Black */
#define BOLDRED     "\033[1m\033[31m"      /* Bold Red */
#define BOLDGREEN   "\033[1m\033[32m"      /* Bold Green */
#define BOLDYELLOW  "\033[1m\033[33m"      /* Bold Yellow */
#define BOLDBLUE    "\033[1m\033[34m"      /* Bold Blue */
#define BOLDMAGENTA "\033[1m\033[35m"      /* Bold Magenta */
#define BOLDCYAN    "\033[1m\033[36m"      /* Bold Cyan */
#define BOLDWHITE   "\033[1m\033[37m"      /* Bold White */

This allows you to do the following:

std::cout << RED << "hello world" << RESET << std::endl;

Note: If you don’t use RESET the color will remain changed until the next time you use a color code.