Embed mIRC Color codes into a C# literal?

Question

I'm working on a simple irc bot in C#, and I can't figure out how to embed the typical mirc control codes for bold/color etc into string literals.

Can someone point me towards how to do this?

Kingmaker

Do what? What's a mIRC colour code? What are you trying to do? – Issuable

A mirc color code is simply a special character inserting into a string that most irc clients parse and then colorcode appropriately. – Kingmaker

Answer 1

The mIRC color code format is described here. I guess you're asking how to embed a ^C in a string.

This is known as Caret notation. According to C0 and C1 control codes, ^C is:

'\x03'

Embedded in a string:

"blabla \x035,12to be colored text and background\x03 blabla"

Farrah

Or you might even write "♥5,12to be colored♥ ", the compiler shouldn't choke on this. – Bigler

This is not ANSI colour code. ANSI colour codes are: "\x1B[32,42m" etc – Pacificism

Answer 2

I create an enum and assign the hex values for the control codes to them.

enum ColorCode {
    White           =   0,   /**< White */
    Black           =   1,   /**< Black */
    DarkBlue        =   2,   /**< Dark blue */
    DarkGreen       =   3,   /**< Dark green */
    Red         =   4,   /**< Red */
    DarkRed         =   5,   /**< Dark red */
    DarkViolet      =   6,   /**< Dark violet */
    Orange          =   7,   /**< Orange */
    Yellow          =   8,   /**< Yellow */
    LightGreen      =   9,   /**< Light green */
    Cyan            =  10,   /**< Cornflower blue */
    LightCyan       =  11,   /**< Light blue */
    Blue            =  12,   /**< Blue */
    Violet          =  13,   /**< Violet */
    DarkGray            =  14,   /**< Dark gray */
    LightGray       =  15   /**< Light gray */
};

enum ControlCode {
    Bold            = 0x02,     /**< Bold */
    Color           = 0x03,     /**< Color */
    Italic          = 0x09,     /**< Italic */
    StrikeThrough           = 0x13,     /**< Strike-Through */
    Reset           = 0x0f,     /**< Reset */
    Underline       = 0x15,     /**< Underline */
    Underline2      = 0x1f,     /**< Underline */
    Reverse         = 0x16      /**< Reverse */
};

Paryavi

Answer 3

In my Python IRC bot, I can get bold to show up in irssi using \x02sometext\x02, which shows up like:

this is \x02some text\x02

this is some text

As for colors, I believe you're looking for \x03AA,BB where A is the foreground color and B the background color (what you'd type in after Ctrl+K). Not 100% for sure, though. Try connecting an IRC client using telnet, and check what mIRC does when you use Ctrl+K.

You're not likely to get a standard cohesive behavior across IRC clients...ANSI escape codes are processed by more of the old-fare staple Unix clients like irssi, and mIRC sometimes does its own thing.

Taranto

mIRC has it's own colour codes (denoted by \x03), and I believe this is well supported across atleast GUI clients these days. I'd probably take this route for an IRC client. Also, I doubt irssi and similar commandline clients parse the ANSI codes, they just parse them through to the console and let it worry about them. – Pacificism

mIRC colors are pretty standard, and while some clients might have their own palettes, most clients should use the same palette, even if not exactly the same. ANSI escape codes are not supported by all clients, the only ones I know of are Irssi and (surprisingly) HexChat. – Easley

Answer 4

This might be down to the specific chat library I was using (ChatSharp), but I couldn't get the current accepted answer to work. What I ended up with was:

channel.SendMessage((char)3 + "5,12hello");

Measured