Powershell tricks

ANSI colours

After running this script from a powershell prompt (to load it), you can use the tool cat to print text colourized.

Add-Type -MemberDefinition @"
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
public static extern bool SetConsoleMode(IntPtr hConsoleHandle, int mode);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
public static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(int handle);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
public static extern bool GetConsoleMode(IntPtr handle, out int mode);
"@ -namespace win32 -name nativemethods

$h = [win32.nativemethods]::getstdhandle(-11) #  stdout
$m = 0
$success = [win32.nativemethods]::getconsolemode($h, [ref]$m)
$m = $m -bor 4 # undocumented flag to enable ansi/vt100
$success = [win32.nativemethods]::setconsolemode($h, $m)

See Also

• http://www.nivot.org/blog/post/2016/02/04/Windows-10-TH2-%28v1511%29-Console-Host-Enhancements
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29583664/how-do-you-enable-powershell-to-interpret-ansi-color-codes-when-using-get-conten