Qbasic COLOR Statement | ProgrammingBasic

Qbasic Color statement is used to change the Foreground and the background color of the Text in the QBasic Program.

Qbasic COLOR statement syntax

the syntax of the COLOR statement is:

COLOR [foreground],[background]

The word foreground color means color of the text and background color means color that appears behind the text i.e background.

You can use the QbasicCOLOR statement in Qbasic in the following ways:

1) To modify both foreground and background color:

COLOR [foreground color] , [background color]

Use a comma to separate the foreground and the background color.

Examples:

PROGRAM CODE

COLOR 14,1
PRINT "yellow text with blue background"

OUTPUT

2) To change the foreground color only:

COLOR [foreground]

Examples:

PROGRAM CODE

COLOR 2
PRINT “This is green text”

OUTPUT:

3) To change only the background-color

COLOR , [background]

Use a comma after COLOR command and then your background color code

Examples:

PROGRAM CODE:

COLOR , 1
PRINT “this is blue background”

OUTPUT:

If you want to change the entire background color of the screen, use CLS command after setting the background color.

Examples:

PROGRAM CODE:

COLOR 14,1
CLS
PRINT "Yellow text with entire background in blue"

OUTPUT:

The foreground and the background color are represented by numbers in Qbasic. You can use the Qbasic color codes to change the color according to your preferences:

Qbasic Color code table

There are 16 colors (in screen mode 0), numbered from 0 to 15. Use the Qbasic COLOR Statement and the number that the color represents to use it in your code.

You can see from the color code table that there are 8 main colors(from 0 to 7), and the color from 8 to 15 is just the repetitions of color from 1 to 7 but in a lighter shade. The colors are a combination of binary values (blue = 1, green = 2, red = 4), which makes it easier to memorize the color codes.

If you want blinking color, it is available from color code 16 to 31. At 16, the color starts again with blicking black color and end with blinking white at 31. The blinking option is not available for background, it only works for the foreground color(text color). Here the example how to get the blinking color code = 2 (green color code ) + 16 = 18( blinking green color), 4(red color code) + 16 = 20 (blinking red color).

Related topics on Qbasic Statements and Commands:

QB64 Statements 2020

QBasic Commands and Statements-2020

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