Yet another small C++11 library for colors and effects in terminal ouput by means of ansi escape codes

#include <iostream>
#include "aecpp.h"

int main() {
	std::cout << "Normal text\n"
	          << aec::red << "Red text!\n" << aec::reset
	          << aec::bold + aec::blue << "Bold blue text!!\n" << aec::reset;

	auto style = aec::green + aec::italic;

	std::cout << style << "Green italic text!!!\n" << aec::reset;

	return 0;
}

AEC++ is a single-file header-only library, consisting only of the file aecpp.h in the include directory. As long as you adhere to the license, this file is all you need. Simply copy it to a place where your compiler can find it, or use a compiler flag to add the include directory to your compiler's include directory list.

AEC++ has a simple interface, based on C++ stream objects such as cout. To enable a color or an effect, output the appropriate value (e.g. aec::red) to the stream, as shown in the example above. To turn it off again, output aec::reset. The values can be divided into four categories: text colors, background colors, text effects and resetting values. The complete list of outputtable values is shown below:

Text colors

Background colors

Text effects

Resetting values

Note that text effects cannot be reset separately.

Under the hood, outputting these values to a stream object causes special ansi escape codes to be printed. If these codes are printed to a terminal that supports them (i.e. any modern terminal), then they are invisible and trigger the described effects. However, if the codes are printed to a file or a terminal that doesn't support them, the raw codes will be visible. To address this problem, AEC++ by default only actually outputs the codes if the output stream is connected to a terminal that supports them. This means that you don't need to worry about the environment in which your program is used or whether users will redirect your program's output to a file.

Note:
When using background colors, it is important to use aec::reset before writing a newline. Otherwise, the next line may be affected.

In addition to the ansi escape code values, AEC++ provides the aec::Style class. This class represents a combination of escape code values that together form a style. Using Style objects, such styles can be stored and changed via variables. Styles can be constructed by adding code values with the +-operator (as is done in the quick example at the top). They can also be constructed explicitly. This is shown in the additional examples. Style objects can also be modified using its public methods setColor, unsetColor, setBGColor, unsetBGColor, setEffect, unsetEffect and setReset.

A minor technical detail: when outputting styles, its three types of escape codes (text color, background color and text effects) are combined into a single code. This saves a few characters.

As stated, the escape codes are by default only actually printed if the output stream is connected to a terminal that supports them. You may however not always want this behavior. AEC++ provides four different output modes. The active output mode can be changed at runtime using aec::setMode. This function takes an aec::Mode enum value. The available modes are:

• aec::Mode::Always
  Always print escape codes.

• aec::Mode::Auto (default)
  Print escape codes if and only if the output stream is connected to a terminal that supports them.

• aec::Mode::Semi
  Print escape codes if and only if the program is running in an environment that supports them, but do not check if the output stream is connected to a terminal. This may be useful if an AEC++ program is used in a pipeline.

• aec::Mode::Never
  Never print escape codes.

Terminal support of ansi escape codes is currently determined solely based on the environment variable $TERM. View aecpp.h for the values of $TERM that AEC++ considers ansi-escape-code-supporting.

To improve performance, AEC++ does not check whether the output stream is connected to a terminal for every printed escape code. Instead, it checks this only once, at the start of the program. This is not a problem in the vast majority of use cases. However, if you do somehow change the targets of the standard output streams at runtime, you can call aec::checkIfOutputStreamsAreTerminals to make AEC++ re-check them. The length of that function name should serve as an indication of how unlikely it is that you need it :).

Additional example code can be found in examples/examples.cpp. These examples can also be compiled and executed by using make run in the examples directory.

AEC++ was inspired by rang: https://github.com/agauniyal/rang