Writing Console-Mode Applications in Visual Basic

November 20, 2002
By Scott Lloyd

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The console's title may not always be automatically set to what you would like it to be. This is easily remedied by a call to SetConsoleTitle. If you do not, it is set to the name of the process that created the console window. If you are in the Visual Basic, it sets to "VB6", which almost certainly won't do.

Private Declare Function _
SetConsoleTitle Lib "kernel32" Alias _
"SetConsoleTitleA" (ByVal lpConsoleTitle _
As String) As Long

This is fairly self-explanatory. Notice that this function is one of the very few that don't require you to pass a handle as an argument. All that is passed in this function is a string that contains the new title for the console window.

Making Your Output More Colorful

If you were to just call the WriteConsole function, your output would always appear in the same bland gray text. You can change the color of the text printed by subsequent calls to WriteOutput by calling the SetConsoleTextAttribute function.

Private Declare Function _
SetConsoleTextAttribute Lib "kernel32" _
(ByVal hConsoleOutput As Long, _
ByVal wAttributes As Long) As Long

' These values are passed in the wAttributes
' argument
Private Const FOREGROUND_BLUE = &H1
Private Const FOREGROUND_GREEN = &H2
Private Const FOREGROUND_RED = &H4
Private Const FOREGROUND_INTENSITY = &H8
Private Const BACKGROUND_BLUE = &H10
Private Const BACKGROUND_GREEN = &H20
Private Const BACKGROUND_RED = &H40
Private Const BACKGROUND_INTENSITY = &H80

This is a simple function. It takes the console window's output handle and one or more color values. You can combine these values by using Visual Basic's bitwise Or keyword. For example, to create a yellow value, you would define the following constant after the ones listed above.

Private Const FOREGROUND_YELLOW = _
    FOREGROUND_RED _
Or FOREGROUND_GREEN

Other possible colors include cyan, magenta, black, dark-gray, and light-gray (default). Experiment with different combinations using the bitwise Or operator.

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