Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages

NT's COLOR command

Sets the default console foreground and background colors.

COLOR [attr]

attr Specifies color attribute of console output

Color attributes are specified by TWO hex digits — the first corresponds to the background; the second the foreground. Each digit can be any of the following values:

0 = Black   8 = Gray
1 = Blue   9 = Light Blue
2 = Green   A = Light Green
3 = Aqua   B = Light Aqua
4 = Red   C = Light Red
5 = Purple   D = Light Purple
6 = Yellow   E = Light Yellow
7 = White   F = Bright White

If no argument is given, this command restores the color to what it was when CMD.EXE started. This value either comes from the current console window, the /T command line switch or from the DefaultColor registry value.

The COLOR command sets ERRORLEVEL to 1 if an attempt is made to execute the COLOR command with a foreground and background color that are the same.

Example:

"COLOR fc"

produces light red on bright white

 

Errorlevels

When you try to set the foreground and background colors to the same value, COLOR will terminate with a return code (errrlevel) of 1.
This can be used to make a script set an errorlevel.


page last modified: 2011-11-18; loaded in 0.0059 seconds