ColorEcho - printing coloured text from batch files

For some time now, I've been using cecho.exe from a CodeProject article so that I highlight errors and successes in my batch files. And this has worked fine - as long as I was running the files in a console window.

However, for whatever reason, if you call cecho from a batch file that is being run through Visual Studio, or a build process such as Jenkins or TeamCity, nothing would be output.

I had observed that my own console tools which used coloured output appeared perfectly well in all three cases above so I decided I would replicate the cecho.exe tool using C#.

Using the tool

As I'm not in a hurry to change all the batch files calling cecho I've kept the exact same syntax (and for the time being the same annoying behaviour regarding having to manually reset colours and include line breaks).

• {XX}: colours coded as two hexadecimal digits. E.g., {0A} light green
• {color}: colour information as understandable text. E.g., {light red on black}
• {\n}: New line character
• {\t}: Tab character
• {\u0000}: Unicode character code
• {{: escape character {
• {#}: restore foreground colour
• {##}: restore foreground and background colour

Colours are defined as

• 0: Black (black)
• 1: Dark Blue (navy, dark blue)
• 2: Dark Green (green, dark green)
• 3: Dark Cyan (teal, dark cyan)
• 4: Dark Red (maroon, dark red)
• 5: Dark Magenta (purple, dark magenta)
• 6: Dark Yellow (olive, brown, dark yellow)
• 7: Gray (silver, light gray, light grey)
• 8: Dark Gray (gray, grey, dark gray, dark grey)
• 9: Blue (blue, light blue)
• A: Green (lime, light green)
• B: Cyan (aqua, light cyan)
• C: Red (red, light red)
• D: Magenta (fuschia, magenta, light magenta)
• E: Yellow (yellow)
• F: White (white)

The names in brackets are alternatives you can use for understandable text.

Note

For backwards compatibility, this program behaves the same way as the original cecho - lines are not terminated with a carriage return and the colours are not reset. Therefore you should ensure you include {#} or {##} and {\n} at the end of your statements.

Or of course, just modify the source to do this automatically if you don't need compatibility.

Samples

This first example uses the shorthand notation to change ERROR: into red.

cecho {0c}ERROR:{#} Signing failed for program1.exe, retrying{\n}

This example uses named colours instead of hex codes.

cecho This {yellow on teal}word{##} is yellow on a teal background{\n}

This final example prints out an extended character.

cecho {\u2593}