Displaying information

DCli provides a number of methods to display information to a user:
print
Dart provides the built in function 'print' which prints a line of text including a new line.
print('hello world');
printerr
The standard Dart 'print' function prints to stdout, DCli's 'printerr' function is identical except that it prints to stderr.
printerr('something bad happened.');
You should use printerr when you are printing error messages.
echo
The echo function is provided to supplement the Dart print method. The 'echo' allows you to control whether a new line is output after the text. By default echo will NOT output a newline.
echo('hello', newline: false);
Colour coding
DCli allows you colour code your text output.
print(orange('hello world'));
You can also control the background colour:
print(orange('hello world', background: AnsiColor.white));
The following colours are supported for both the foreground (text) and background colours.
red
black
green
blue
yellow
magenta
cyan
white
orange
grey
By default the bold attribute is attached to each of the above builtin colours. You can suppress the bold attribute:
 print(red('a dark message', bold: false));
Format().row
This method is considered experimental. Use at your own peril.
The row method allows you to output a row of fixed with columns with controlled alignment.
print(Format().row(['OS Version', '${Platform.operatingSystemVersion}'],
        widths: [17, -1]));
Outputs a row with two columns. The first is 17 characters wide, the second expands as needed.
print(Format().row([
          '$label',
          '${fstat.modeString()}',
          '<user>:${(owner.group == owner.user ? '<user>' : owner.group)}',
          '${privatePath(path)} '
        ], widths: [
          17,
          9,
          16,
          -1
        ], alignments: [
          TableAlignment.left,
          TableAlignment.left,
          TableAlignment.middle,
          TableAlignment.left
        ]));
Outputs a row with four columns of widths 17, 9, 16 and infinite. The columns are aligned, left, right, middle and left.
clearScreen
Clears the console.
clearScreen();
clearLine
Clears the current line.
clearLine();
startOfLine
Moves the cursor to the start of the current line.
startOfLine;
previousLine
Moves the cursor to the start of the previous line.
showCursor
Shows or hides the cursor.
showCursor(show: true);
column
Moves the cursor to the given column on the current line.

Last modified 6mo ago