Show System.out.println output with another color

Question

I have a big project to debug, and I was wondering if there is anyway I could use to change the System.out.println method in the output of eclipse

for example :

System.out.println("I want this to be red");
System.out.println("I want this to be blue");
System.out.println("I want this to be yellow");
System.out.println("I want this to be magenta");

for more readability.

EDIT

with sysout I have this

with syserr I have this

Cheju

possible duplicate of How to print color in console using System.out.println? – Prynne

most of the methods reported here work at the system console but NOT at the Eclipse console which is what the question was. – Outward

Answer 1

Within Eclipse, the simplest approach would be to use System.err.println for lines you want to be in red - I believe that's the default. (You can change it in Preferences -> Run/Debug -> Console).

That difference won't show up when running in a real console of course, but I don't think the Eclipse console supports ANSI colour escape sequences etc.

EDIT: For the Windows console, I'd expect ANSI escape sequences to work. It's not hugely portable, but if that's not a problem, you could just create a class to encapsulate the escape sequences appropriately, so you could call something like:

ansiConsole.printRed("sample line in red");
ansiConsole.printBlue("sample line in blue");

(I'd probably make those methods return back to whatever the "current" colour was after each call.)

EDIT: As noted in comments, the Jansi library already exists, so you might as well use that. It doesn't have the methods described above, but I'm sure it'll still do what you want...

Convoy

@OpenMind: Yes, but in a totally different way. What do you mean by "I don't have the same result" before? – Convoy

@OpenMind: Try flushing after each write - I suspect it's a buffering issue. – Convoy

Not working, I also tried your Jansi library. There no method called printRed() ! – Cheju

@OpenMind: "my" Jansi library? I don't have any library for ANSI escape sequences - I was suggesting that you wrote one yourself: "you could just create a class"... – Convoy

(Having said which, it sounds like Jansi already has the functionality you want - just not encapsulated as I described. Will edit a reference into the answer.) – Convoy

For Elipse Luna and MacOS 10.10, the only thing that worked for me is this: mihai-nita.net/2013/06/03/eclipse-plugin-ansi-in-console – Outward

Answer 2

Please Refer the following code.Also refer this link for ANSI color codes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code

public class ColourConsoleDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // TODO code application logic here
        System.out.println("\033[0m BLACK");
        System.out.println("\033[31m RED");
        System.out.println("\033[32m GREEN");
        System.out.println("\033[33m YELLOW");
        System.out.println("\033[34m BLUE");
        System.out.println("\033[35m MAGENTA");
        System.out.println("\033[36m CYAN");
        System.out.println("\033[37m WHITE");
    }   
}

Saintmihiel

actually \033[0m stands for reset. – Kuehl

Brilliant! I think this should be the accepted answer – Bartholomeus

i don't get the colour, only "?[32mSome test text?[0m" displayed in my eclipse console – Allcot

> They want to print colored text in the Eclipse Console, not the Windows Command Prompt or terminal. Eclipse Console is not an ansi compatible console. #51413544 – Termless

Answer 3

Please have a look at Jansi (Jansi's Github)

Jansi is a small java library that allows you to use ANSI escape sequences to format your console output which works even on windows.

Provo

U can use this: java2s.com/Code/Jar/j/Downloadjansi14jar.htm if you want to use a jar instead of the archive. This resolved my import problem in eclipse. – Zn

Answer 4

It seems that you want to highlight the output of System.out.println() using different colours in order to help you to debug , why don't redirect all the output of System.out to a file in your program entry point :

FileOutputStream fis = new FileOutputStream(new File("log.txt"));
PrintStream out = new PrintStream(fis); 
System.setOut(out);

Then using some free and portable real-time log file monitoring tool that has configurable highlighting function using different colours , such as BareTail , to view this file.

Infidelity