The routine attrset sets the current attributes of the given window to attrs. The routine attroff turns off the named attributes without turning any other attributes on or off. The routine attron turns on the named attributes without affecting any others. The routine standout is the same as attron(A_STANDOUT). The routine standend is the same as attrset(A_NORMAL) or attrset(0), that is, it turns off all attributes.
The attrset and related routines do not affect the attributes used when erasing portions of the window. See bkgd(3NCURSES) for functions which modify the attributes used for erasing and clearing.
The routine color_set sets the current color of the given window to the foreground/background combination described by the color_pair_number. The parameter opts is reserved for future use, applications must supply a null pointer.
The routine wattr_get returns the current attribute and color pair for the given window; attr_get returns the current attribute and color pair for stdscr. The remaining attr_* functions operate exactly like the corresponding attr* functions, except that they take arguments of type attr_t rather than int.
The routine chgat changes the attributes of a given number of characters starting at the current cursor location of stdscr. It does not update the cursor and does not perform wrapping. A character count of -1 or greater than the remaining window width means to change attributes all the way to the end of the current line. The wchgat function generalizes this to any window; the mvwchgat function does a cursor move before acting. In these functions, the color argument is a color-pair index (as in the first argument of init_pair, see color(3NCURSES)). The opts argument is not presently used, but is reserved for the future (leave it NULL).
| A_NORMAL | Normal display (no highlight) |
| A_STANDOUT | Best highlighting mode of the terminal. |
| A_UNDERLINE | Underlining |
| A_REVERSE | Reverse video |
| A_BLINK | Blinking |
| A_DIM | Half bright |
| A_BOLD | Extra bright or bold |
| A_PROTECT | Protected mode |
| A_INVIS | Invisible or blank mode |
| A_ALTCHARSET | Alternate character set |
| A_CHARTEXT | Bit-mask to extract a character |
| COLOR_PAIR(n) | Color-pair number n |
The following macro is the reverse of COLOR_PAIR(n):
PAIR_NUMBER(attrs) Returns the pair number associated
with the COLOR_PAIR(n) attribute.
The return values of many of these routines are not meaningful (they are implemented as macro-expanded assignments and simply return their argument). The SVr4 manual page claims (falsely) that these routines always return 1.
COLOR_PAIR values can only be OR'd with attributes if the pair number is less than 256. The alternate functions such as color_set can pass a color pair value directly. However, ncurses ABI 4 and 5 simply OR this value within the alternate functions. You must use ncurses ABI 6 to support more than 256 color pairs.
The XSI Curses standard states that whether the traditional functions attron/attroff/attrset can manipulate attributes other than A_BLINK, A_BOLD, A_DIM, A_REVERSE, A_STANDOUT, or A_UNDERLINE is "unspecified". Under this implementation as well as SVr4 curses, these functions correctly manipulate all other highlights (specifically, A_ALTCHARSET, A_PROTECT, and A_INVIS).
XSI Curses added the new entry points, attr_get, attr_on, attr_off, attr_set, wattr_on, wattr_off, wattr_get, wattr_set. These are intended to work with a new series of highlight macros prefixed with WA_.
Older versions of this library did not force an update of the screen when changing the attributes. Use touchwin to force the screen to match the updated attributes.
| WA_NORMAL | Normal display (no highlight) |
| WA_STANDOUT | Best highlighting mode of the terminal. |
| WA_UNDERLINE | Underlining |
| WA_REVERSE | Reverse video |
| WA_BLINK | Blinking |
| WA_DIM | Half bright |
| WA_BOLD | Extra bright or bold |
| WA_ALTCHARSET | Alternate character set |
The XSI curses standard specifies that each pair of corresponding A_ and WA_-using functions operates on the same current-highlight information.
The XSI standard extended conformance level adds new highlights A_HORIZONTAL, A_LEFT, A_LOW, A_RIGHT, A_TOP, A_VERTICAL (and corresponding WA_ macros for each) which this implementation does not yet support.
X/Open does not define any error conditions.
This implementation returns an error if the window pointer is null. The wcolor_set function returns an error if the color pair parameter is outside the range 0..COLOR_PAIRS-1. This implementation also provides getattrs for compatibility with older versions of curses.