Detect ANSI-compatible console from Windows batch file?

Question

Windows 10 console host, conhost.exe, has native support for ANSI escape sequences, older versions do not. How can one detect the presence or absence of console ANSI support from a batch file?

Is it possible to call GetConsoleMode or other Windows API calls directly from a batch file?

You need PowerShell to call a Windows API, but you can call PowerShell from batch. — SomethingDark, Jun 27 '16 at 01:51
@SomethingDark, can you recommend any good resources on how to call Windows APIs from Powershell? — jwfearn, Jun 27 '16 at 02:26
Honestly, the one time I've ever needed to do it, I was lucky enough to only need to move and resize windows and I managed to find existing code that did exactly what I needed, but it's something like this: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mattbie/2010/02/23/how-to-call-net-and-win32-methods-from-powershell-and-your-troubleshooting-packs/ — SomethingDark, Jun 27 '16 at 02:32
@Mofi: That's the old code-by-coincidence strategy, that never works out too well. The feature may get backported to Windows 8, so now your code fails to work on Windows 8. And there is [SetConsoleMode](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686033.aspx), so you cannot blindly assume that virtual terminal sequences are always interpreted on Windows 10. And you really don't know what's the call on virtual terminal sequences in Windows v.Next. — IInspectable, Jun 27 '16 at 07:43
@Mofi: That's an unfortunate decision, because now a future visitor will no longer know, that using `VER` had been considered, but was dismissed. Using `VER` leads to a solution that's not robust, and works by coincidence only. — IInspectable, Jun 28 '16 at 07:23

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:16

The answer to your last question is: Yes, with the aid of PowerShell code. This Batch file do what you requested:

@echo off
setlocal

set /A STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE=-11
set /A ENABLE_PROCESSED_OUTPUT=1, ENABLE_WRAP_AT_EOL_OUTPUT=2, ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING=4

PowerShell  ^
   $GetStdHandle = Add-Type 'A' -PassThru -MemberDefinition '  ^
      [DllImport(\"Kernel32.dll\")]  ^
      public static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(int nStdHandle);  ^
   ';  ^
   $GetConsoleMode = Add-Type 'B' -PassThru -MemberDefinition '  ^
      [DllImport(\"Kernel32.dll\")]  ^
      public static extern bool GetConsoleMode(IntPtr hWnd, ref UInt32 lpMode);  ^
   ';  ^
   $StdoutHandle = $GetStdHandle::GetStdHandle(%STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE%);  ^
   $ConsoleMode = New-Object -TypeName UInt32;  ^
   $null = $GetConsoleMode::GetConsoleMode($StdoutHandle,[ref]$ConsoleMode);  ^
   Set-Content ConsoleMode.txt $ConsoleMode  ^
%End PowerShell%

set /P "ConsoleMode=" < ConsoleMode.txt
set /A "AnsiCompatible=ConsoleMode & ENABLE_VIRTUAL_TERMINAL_PROCESSING"
if %AnsiCompatible% neq 0 (
   echo The console is Ansi-compatible!
) else (
   echo Ansi codes not supported...
)

I wrote this type of code reading the examples at the PowerShell help on Add-Type cmdlet and the info given in the accepted answer at this question.

Detect ANSI-compatible console from Windows batch file?

1 Answers1

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