README

dterm

Cross-platform Terminal/TTY utils. Supports:

• Colorful output
• Status line (e.g. for progress bar)

Works for Windows and Unix, fallbacks on other platforms.

dterm: simple procedural API

SetTerminalColor changes color of followed Write/Writeln calls (for both stdout and stderr):

uses
  dterm;

// print colorful text
SetTerminalColor(TERMINAL_COLOR_GREEN);
Write('Hello ');
SetTerminalColor(TERMINAL_COLOR_YELLOW);
Write('world');
SetTerminalColor(TERMINAL_COLOR_MAGENTA);
Write('!');
Writeln;

// always restore default colors
ResetTerminalColor;

See colors example.

Progress bar starts with StartTerminalStatusLine('Initial status') and finishes with FinishTerminalStatusLine. Write and Writeln are not allowed between these two calls, use UpdateTerminalStatusLine('New status'). See progressbar example.

Terminal or not?

IsStdoutTerminal return true whenever output is a terminal. This may be used for teawking output, e.g. how ls works: by default it prints a "human readable" table if output is a terminal and a sequence of lines otherwise.

IsStderrTerminal is for stderr.

Colors and status line are automatically disabled for non-terminal pipes.

dterminal: wrapper unit

dterm unit provides stateless interface: it does not know which funcions did you call before, are we in status line, what color is set now etc. It's client responsibility in restoring terminal state.

dterminal unit implements a wrapper object TTerminal. For now it does not do much more than the dterm. It provides similar interface, additionaly it keeps tracking of some states (TTerminal.InStatusLine returns true if status line is enabled) and auto resets color in destructor.

uses
  dterm,
  dterminal;

var
  Terminal: TTerminal;

begin
  Terminal.Init;

  Terminal.SetColor(TERMINAL_COLOR_GREEN);
  Writeln('Hello world!');

  Terminal.Done;
end;

See example.