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 is red.

PS C:> Write-Host "Blue" -ForegroundColor Blue
Blue

This output is blue.

PS C:> Write-Host "Red", "Blue" -ForegroundColor Red, Blue
Red Blue

This output is magenta, but I want the color to be red for the word red, and blue for the word blue via the one command. How can I do that?

Answer 1

You could roll your own Write-Color command or something that looks for inline tokens that change the color. This is how ANSI escape sequences used to work back in the BBS days.

But you could achieve what you want by doing:

Write-Host "Red " -f red -nonewline; Write-Host "Blue " -f blue;

Here's a simple little function that does what you asked.

function Write-Color([String[]]$Text, [ConsoleColor[]]$Color) {
    for ($i = 0; $i -lt $Text.Length; $i++) {
        Write-Host $Text[$i] -Foreground $Color[$i] -NoNewLine
    }
    Write-Host
}

Write-Color -Text Red,White,Blue -Color Red,White,Blue