CPP-Terminal is a small and dependency-free C++ library for writing platform independent terminal-based applications. It follows the "Zero-overhead principle" and limits externally included files to the C++ STL. Being cross-platform we are currently supporting Windows, Linux and MacOS and are providing an unified API across all platforms. Our main features are consisting of Colors, Keyboard input, terminal resize handling, as well as other common terminal functionality. It's also possible to open a managed terminal from a windows GUI application.

Hello World example

To write a simple Hello World program, all you need to do is:

#include "cpp-terminal/terminal.hpp"
#include <iostream>
 
int main()
{
  std::cout << "Just including terminal.hpp activate \033[31mcolor\033[0m !" << std::endl;
}

or

#include "cpp-terminal/terminal.hpp"
#include "cpp-terminal/color.hpp"
#include <iostream>
 
int main()
{
  std::cout << Term::color_fg(Term::Color::Name::Red)<<"Hello world !"<<color_fg(Term::Color::Name::Default)<< std::endl;
}

On windows you can simply create or attach a console through a GUI application by doing:

#include "cpp-terminal/terminal.hpp"
#include "cpp-terminal/color.hpp"
#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>
 
int __stdcall WinMain(HINSTANCE hinst, HINSTANCE hprev, LPSTR cmdline, int show)
{
  std::cout << Term::color_fg(Term::Color::Name::Red)<<"Hello world !"<<color_fg(Term::Color::Name::Default)<< std::endl;
  return 0;
}

Until 2021, CPP-Terminal used to be a single header library. Now, CPP-Terminal consists out of multiple small and usage oriented headers:

cpp-terminal/input.hpp: functions for gathering input
cpp-terminal/prompt.hpp: some variations of different prompts
cpp-terminal/window.hpp: a fully managed terminal window for terminal user interfaces (TUI)
cpp-terminal/version.hpp: macros with cpp-terminal's version number

CPP-Terminal tries to be a small and simple replacement for ncurses. This approach keeps the code small and maintainable, but also easy to extend it's functionality. We limit ourselves to a subset of features that work on all supported platforms without needing to worry about style differences or other changes. Any application written with CPP-Terminal will work everywhere out of the box natively, without emulation or extra work. The small codebase makes CPP-Terminal easy to debug and extend, as well as understanding what happens behind the scenes in the library's core.

Examples

We have created serval examples to show possible use cases of CPP-Terminal and to get you started more quickly. Every example works natively on all platforms in the exact same way:

colors.cpp: basic color, style and unicode demo
kilo.cpp: the kilo text editor ported to C++ and CPP-Terminal instead of using Linux specific API
menu.cpp: An interactive menu using only the contents of cpp-terminal/base.hpp
menu_window.cpp: An interactive menu using the fully managed windowing system from cpp-terminal/window.hpp
keys.cpp: Interactively shows the keys pressed

Supported platforms

Platform	Supported versions	Arch	Compiler	C++ standard
Windows	10 and higher*	x86, x86_64	MSVC 2019, MSVC 2022, clang11, clang12, clang13, clang14, clang15, clang-cl	11,14,17,20
(Windows) MSYS2	All supported	x86, x86_64	ucrt , clang, mingw	11,14,17,20
MacOS	11		xcode11.7 xcode12.4 xcode12.5.1 xcode13 gcc10 gcc11 gcc12	11,14,17,20
MacOS	12		xcode13.1 xcode13.2 xcode13.3 xcode13.4	11,14,17,20
Linux	All supported	x86_64	4.7<=GCC<= 12 3.5<=Clang<=15 intel-oneapi	11,14,17,20
Linux (dockcross)	All supported	arm64 armv5 armv5-musl armv5-uclibc armv6 armv7a, mips, mipsel-lts, s390x, ppc64le, xtensa-uclibc, x86, x64, x64-clang, x64-tinycc	4.7<=GCC<= 12 3.5<=Clang<=15	11,14,17,20

‍Windows versions prior Windows 10 are missing the Win32 API functionality for entering the "raw mode" and therefore won't work. They are also lacking ANSI support. See #173 for adding support to prior windows versions for MSVC / Win32.

How to use

Adding CPP-Terminal to your own project is really easy. We have collected various ways with easy how-to's in our documentation.

Documentation

🌍 Online 📖 PDF

Contributing

Contributing to CPP-Terminal is highly appreciated and can be done in more ways than code. Extending it's functionality, reporting or fixing bugs and extending the documentations are just a few of them.