Terminal Colors (ns_color)

When building a Command Line Interface (CLI), color is essential for user experience. It helps users instantly distinguish between a routine success message, a non-critical warning, and a fatal error.

In standard C, adding color means injecting raw ANSI escape codes directly into your strings, which makes your code incredibly difficult to read:

// Standard C: Hard to read and easy to mess up
printf("\033[1;31mError:\033[0m Could not open file.\n");

NextStd solves this by providing semantic, easy-to-read macros in the ns_color.h header.

Basic Usage

Because these macros resolve to standard string literals under the hood, you can rely on the C preprocessor to automatically concatenate them with your text.

Just include <nextstd/ns_color.h>, place the color macro immediately before your string, and always remember to append NS_COLOR_RESET at the end!

#include <nextstd/ns.h>
#include <nextstd/ns_color.h>

int main() {
    // A standard success message
    ns_println(NS_COLOR_GREEN "Success: User profile updated." NS_COLOR_RESET);

    // A warning message
    ns_println(NS_COLOR_YELLOW "Warning: Disk space is running low." NS_COLOR_RESET);

    // A critical error message
    ns_println(NS_COLOR_RED "Error: Failed to connect to the database." NS_COLOR_RESET);

    return 0;
}

Mixing Colors and Styles

You can stack multiple macros together to combine colors with text formatting, such as making a string bold or underlining a URL. Just separate them with a space.

#include <nextstd/ns.h>
#include <nextstd/ns_color.h>

int main() {
    // Bold and Cyan text
    ns_println(NS_COLOR_BOLD NS_COLOR_CYAN "Starting NextStd Server..." NS_COLOR_RESET);

    // Underlined Magenta text
    ns_println(NS_COLOR_UNDERLINE NS_COLOR_MAGENTA "https://github.com/NextStd/nextstd" NS_COLOR_RESET);

    return 0;
}

The Importance of Resetting

Terminal emulators are stateful. When you send a color code to the terminal, it changes the color of all subsequent text until it receives a reset command.

If you forget to include NS_COLOR_RESET at the end of your ns_println call, every single thing your program (and potentially your user’s terminal prompt) prints afterward will be stuck in that format!

Available Macros Reference

Here is a list of the standard text styling macros available in ns_color.h:

Colors:

• NS_COLOR_RED
• NS_COLOR_GREEN
• NS_COLOR_YELLOW
• NS_COLOR_BLUE
• NS_COLOR_MAGENTA
• NS_COLOR_CYAN
• NS_COLOR_WHITE

Styles:

• NS_COLOR_BOLD
• NS_COLOR_UNDERLINE

State Control:

• NS_COLOR_RESET (Resets all colors and text formatting back to the terminal default)