如何在C ++中更改颜色？

Question

So i searched for it and i found many answers. I found that in c++ there's no standard cross-platform way to do that and that the operative system manages colors. For example i found that on windows you can use the system("color 1") statement to change color to the text ( or foreground) and the system("color A") to change color to the background, or both system("color 1A") to change both. But this will change the whole colors, and i was wondering if there was a way to change it like even for a single character. Like take the program that i just did as an example:

 #include<iostream>
using namespace std;  /* I prefer to use this because i think that's a huge time saver and it's also easier*/

void printRoad(int i)  /* That's my function, so by this function it prints a number of times choosed by the user 4 pieces of road*/
{
    int counter=1;
    while (counter <= i)
    {
        system("color 2");           /*Here is what i was talking about. I used the system("color 2") statement to change the text color
                                     from the default to green, but it changes the whole text.*/
        cout << "** | **" << endl;
        cout << "** | **" << endl;
        cout << "** | **" << endl;
        cout << "** | **" << endl;
        counter++;
    }
};
void main()  /*I don't need any specific return value from either the main() and the function so i thought it was a good idea to
             just use void.*/
{
    cout << "How many piece of roads do you want to build?" << endl;  /*Here it asks to the user what to do.*/
    int pieces = 0;
    cin >> pieces;
    printRoad(pieces);   //Here is the function call.


    system("pause");     /* Because i'm using windows and i'm using Visual Studio Express 2013 I used system("pause") to pause 
                         the program and let the user see the output.*/
}

So what if, for example, i'd like to change each piece of road color? Like the first cout<<"** | **"<

I also read many people complaining about the use of system("") statements. I understand it because by doing so your program lose the cross-platform ability. But if the thing is dependent on the system we're on, how should we do it by keeping the cross-platform ability? Thanks for any answer.

Answer 1

Actually you can use this instead of calling system() :

SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), ValueOfColour);

As far as I understood your problem, you only want a certain character to be in your choosen colour. Then you need to change it back to the default value white/grey after this character was printed.