Multiple foreground colors in PowerShell in one command

Question

I want to output many different foreground colors with one statement.

PS C:\\> Write-Host \"Red\" -ForegroundColor Red
Red

This output i

Answer 1

I found a much easier option at https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2011/05/17/writing-output-with-powershell/

Basically, the first write-host includes the option -NoNewLine. This prevents the new line from forming. The next write-host will be added immediately after the previous text. And each of the separate write-host can have -foregroundcolor options. That can be repeated for each color change you need.

Example with one line of text with three colors:

write-host "Your text here " -ForeGroundColor Red -NoNewLine
write-host "some other text here " -ForeGroundColor Yellow -NoNewLine
write-host "And the last text here."

Notice that there is a space after the text in the first and second write-host. PowerShell is not concatenating or combining the text, it is simply not moving the cursor to the next line.

Answer 2

I was trying to run this on a Windows Server 2012R2 box under ISE and the function by Jesse Chisholm was failing because for some reason (Get-Host).UI.RawUII.ForegroundColor was -1. To stop this happening and to simplify the function I little I modified it as follows:

function Write-ColorText
{
    # DO NOT SPECIFY param(...)
    #    we parse colors ourselves.

    $allColors = ("-Black",   "-DarkBlue","-DarkGreen","-DarkCyan","-DarkRed","-DarkMagenta","-DarkYellow","-Gray",
                  "-Darkgray","-Blue",    "-Green",    "-Cyan",    "-Red",    "-Magenta",    "-Yellow",    "-White",
                   "-Foreground")

    $color = "Foreground"
    $nonewline = $false

    foreach($arg in $args)
    {
        if ($arg -eq "-nonewline")
        { 
            $nonewline = $true 
        }
        elseif ($allColors -contains $arg)
        {
            $color = $arg.substring(1)
        }
        else
        {
            if ($color -eq "Foreground")
            {
                Write-Host $arg -nonewline
            }
            else
            {
                Write-Host $arg -foreground $color -nonewline
            }
        }
    }

    Write-Host -nonewline:$nonewline
}

I know this is an old post but hopefully this is useful to somebody and thanks Jesse for giving me this wonderful function!!

Answer 3

Here is small a function I wrote to output colored text (it is actually smaller, but I rewrote it to be more understandable):

function Write-Color() {
    Param (
        [string] $text = $(Write-Error "You must specify some text"),
        [switch] $NoNewLine = $false
    )

    $startColor = $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor;

    $text.Split( [char]"{", [char]"}" ) | ForEach-Object { $i = 0; } {
        if ($i % 2 -eq 0) {
            Write-Host $_ -NoNewline;
        } else {
            if ($_ -in [enum]::GetNames("ConsoleColor")) {
                $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = ($_ -as [System.ConsoleColor]);
            }
        }

        $i++;
    }

    if (!$NoNewLine) {
        Write-Host;
    }
    $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $startColor;
}

It's quite simple to use: just use Write-Color "your text" and add some color name between curly brackets where you want the text to be colored.

Examples:

`Write-Color "Hello, {red}my dear {green}friend !"` will output

Script screenshot

You can put it in your $profile file to use it in a simple PowerShell prompt, or just add it to some scripts.

Answer 4

This works too...

Write-Host "Don't forget to " -ForegroundColor Yellow -NoNewline; Write-Host "CALL YOUR MOM " -ForegroundColor Red -NoNewline; Write-Host "every day!" -ForegroundColor Yellow

Answer 5

Here is a simplistic way to do this

if ($help)
{

    Write-Host "     For the switch " -NoNewline; Write-Host " -userUniqueId" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline; Write-Host ", enter an email address or samaccountname (pin) so '-userUniqueId 123456' "
    Write-Host "";
    Write-Host "     For the switch " -NoNewline; Write-Host " -disableMFAForUser" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline; Write-Host ", enter an email address or samaccountname (pin) with the -userUniqueId and then '-disableMFAForUser $true' "
    Write-Host "";
    Write-Host "     For the switch " -NoNewline; Write-Host "-enableMFAForUser" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline; Write-Host ", enter an email address or samaccountname (pin) with the -userUniqueId and then '-enableMFAForUser $true' "
    Write-Host "";
    Write-Host "     For the switch " -NoNewline; Write-Host "-verifyAllMFAEnabled" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline; Write-Host ", enter '-verifyAllMFAEnabled $true' "
    Write-Host "";
    Write-Host "     For the switch " -NoNewline; Write-Host " -verifyAllMFADisabledSpecificUser" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline; Write-Host ", enter an email address or samaccountname (pin) and then '-verifyAllMFADisabledSpecificUser $true' "
    Write-Host "";

    return;
}

Answer 6

This function provides different syntactic sugar:

function color-Write
{
    # DO NOT SPECIFY param(...)
    #    we parse colors ourselves.

    $allColors = ("-Black",   "-DarkBlue","-DarkGreen","-DarkCyan","-DarkRed","-DarkMagenta","-DarkYellow","-Gray",
                  "-Darkgray","-Blue",    "-Green",    "-Cyan",    "-Red",    "-Magenta",    "-Yellow",    "-White")
    $foreground = (Get-Host).UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor # current foreground
    $color = $foreground
    [bool]$nonewline = $false
    $sofar = ""
    $total = ""

    foreach($arg in $args)
    {
        if ($arg -eq "-nonewline") { $nonewline = $true }
        elseif ($arg -eq "-foreground")
        {
            if ($sofar) { Write-Host $sofar -foreground $color -nonewline }
            $color = $foregrnd
            $sofar = ""
        }
        elseif ($allColors -contains $arg)
        {
            if ($sofar) { Write-Host $sofar -foreground $color -nonewline }
            $color = $arg.substring(1)
            $sofar = ""
        }
        else
        {
            $sofar += "$arg "
            $total += "$arg "
        }
    }
    # last bit done special
    if (!$nonewline)
    {
        Write-Host $sofar -foreground $color
    }
    elseif($sofar)
    {
        Write-Host $sofar -foreground $color -nonewline
    }
}

Examples:

color-Write This is normal text
color-Write Normal -Red Red -White White -Blue Blue -ForeGround Normal