Bold text through C++ write statement

Question

I'm working on a dictionary server via telnet, and I'd like it to return it in this format:

  **word** (wordType): wordDef wordDef wordDef wordDef
wordDef wordDef wordDef.

Right now I'm outputting the code using:

write( my_socket, ("%s", word.data()    ), word.length()    ); // Bold this
write( my_socket, ("%s", theRest.data() ), theRest.length() );

So I'd like that first line to be bolded.

Edit

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is for a command line.

Answer 1

Consider using using something like VT100 escape sequences. Since your server is telnet based the user is likely to have a client that supports various terminal modes.

For instance if you wanted to turn on bold for a VT100 terminal you would output

ESC[1m

where "ESC" is the character value 0x1b. To switch back to normal formatting output

ESC[0m

To use this in your application you can change the example lines from your question to the following.

std::string str = "Hello!"
write( my_socket, "\x1b[1m", 4); // Turn on bold formatting
write( my_socket, str.c_str(), str.size()); // output string
write( my_socket, "\x1b[0m", 4); // Turn all formatting off

There other terminal modes such as VT52, VT220, etc. You might want to look into using ncurses although it might be a bit heavy if all you need is simple bold on/off.