Why the RedirectStandardOutput does not have the necessary ANSI codes?

Question

Ok here's a simple Console Application I made to test the RedirectStandardOutput of the Process.StartInfo.

    foreach (c In [Enum].GetValues(GetType(ConsoleColor))
    {
        Console.ForegroundColor = c
        Console.WriteLine("Test")
    }

And below is the application result.

So as we can see the colors show beautifully on the console.

However, when I read the StandardOutput.BaseStream there's no color information, no ANSI codes, no nothing.

How do I capture the color information on the redirected stream?

Answer 1

The short answer is that the streams as given to you by the .NET Console class are purely character-based and return only textual data.

To get the extended color info, it would be necessary to P/Invoke the Win32 API ReadConsoleOutput. This will return, among other things, an array of COLOR_INFO structs containing the color attributes for each character. You might want to look at the ReadConsoleOutput pinvoke.net page to get started.