ANSI Escape Codes in C – Control Terminal Cursor, Colors, and Position

Posted on August 14, 2012June 27, 2026 by Sandeepa Nadahalli

ANSI escape codes let you control the terminal from a standard C program — hide or show the cursor, move it to any position, and print colored or styled text. Unlike the old DOS graphics.h approach that only worked in Turbo C, ANSI escape codes work on any POSIX terminal: Linux, macOS, and modern Windows …

Change Text Color in C – ANSI Escape Codes (No conio.h)

Posted on July 10, 2012August 22, 2026 by Sandeepa Nadahalli

To change text color in C, print an ANSI escape code before your text: printf(“\033[31mRed text\033[0m\n”); prints in red and then resets. That’s the whole trick — no library, no header, no Turbo C. The old way you’ll still find in most tutorials, textcolor() from <conio.h>, only ever worked in MS-DOS compilers and won’t compile …