does anyone of you lot know a way to use colors in a program compiled in Dev C++, except for the

system("color a");

function?

and I'd also be glad to know another way to clear the screen, then the:

system("cls");

function

SetConsoleTextAttribute can change the foreground and background:

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>

using namespace std;

HANDLE SetColor(
                HANDLE console, 
                int fg = FOREGROUND_RED | FOREGROUND_GREEN | FOREGROUND_BLUE,
                int bg = 0)
{
    if (console == NULL)
        console = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

    SetConsoleTextAttribute(console, fg | bg);

    return console;
}

int main()
{
    HANDLE console = SetColor(NULL, FOREGROUND_RED, BACKGROUND_GREEN);

    cout << "Hello world!\n";
    SetColor(console);
    cout << "All done.\n";
}

and I'd also be glad to know another way to clear the screen

Here is a windows way:

void clear_screen()
{
    DWORD n, size;
    COORD coord = {0};
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;
    HANDLE h = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

    GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(h, &csbi);
    size = csbi.dwSize.X * csbi.dwSize.Y;
    FillConsoleOutputCharacter(h, TEXT(' '), size, coord, &n);
    GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(h, &csbi);
    FillConsoleOutputAttribute(h, csbi.wAttributes, size, coord, &n);
    SetConsoleCursorPosition(h, coord);
}

Thank you, this helped a lot!

just one question, could you use any othe colors then blue, green, red?

Well, normally if you want to make sure that your program is platform independent, pdcurses is often used for that :)

just one question, could you use any othe colors then blue, green, red?

You can combine red green and blue just like in art class. :) Put them together with a binary or:

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>

using namespace std;

HANDLE SetColor(
                HANDLE console, 
                int fg = FOREGROUND_RED | FOREGROUND_GREEN | FOREGROUND_BLUE,
                int bg = 0)
{
    if (console == NULL)
        console = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

    SetConsoleTextAttribute(console, fg | bg);

    return console;
}

int main()
{
    HANDLE console = SetColor(NULL, FOREGROUND_RED, BACKGROUND_GREEN);

    cout << "Hello world!\n";
    SetColor(console, FOREGROUND_BLUE | FOREGROUND_GREEN);
    cout << "Teal.\n";
    SetColor(console, FOREGROUND_RED | FOREGROUND_BLUE);
    cout << "Purple.\n";
    SetColor(console);
}

You should read the link to SetConsoleTextAttribute. The character attributes page shows how to do all of this.

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