How do I print colored text in IDLE's terminal?

python python-3.x colors python-idle
user4728253 picture user4728253 · Feb 26, 2017 · Viewed 14.8k times · Source

This is very easily a duplicate question--because it is. However, there are very many inadequate answers to this (e.g. try curses! -- pointing to a 26 page documentation).

I just want to print text in a color other than blue when I'm outputting in IDLE. Is it possible? What's an easy way to do this? I'm running Python 3.6 on Windows.

Please explain with an example.

(I have found that ANSI codes do not work inside IDLE, only on the terminal.)

Answer

Juan T picture Juan T · Feb 26, 2017

Put this at the "start" of your code:

import sys

try: color = sys.stdout.shell
except AttributeError: raise RuntimeError("Use IDLE")

And then use color.write(YourText,Color) for "printing":

color.write("Hi, are you called Miharu461? \n","KEYWORD")
color.write("Yes","STRING")
color.write(" or ","KEYWORD")
color.write("No\n","COMMENT")

This prints:

Prints

Note: this does NOT automatically puts the enter (like in the print function/statement). So, when you are printing put \n at the end of the last string to put it.

The "Colors" you can put are: SYNC, stdin, BUILTIN, STRING, console, COMMENT, stdout, TODO, stderr, hit, DEFINITION, KEYWORD, ERROR, and sel.

Note 2: This is dependent of the color scheme you are using for IDLE. So I recommend you to use it for highlighting, and not for making a program for asking what in color is some word.

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