How to Create Random Color Pairs

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, version 3.0
• Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS, versions 1.02, 2.0, 2.5x, 2.6x
• Microsoft FoxPro for Windows, versions 2.5x, 2.6x
• Microsoft FoxPro for Macintosh, version 2.5x, 2.6a

SUMMARY

It is sometimes desirable to randomly generate colors, for example, for a screen that changes the color for a @ ... SAY statement. This article demonstrates a sample procedure for creating random colors.

MORE INFORMATION

The following code displays the text "This is a test" with various randomly generated colors.

   FOR i = 1 to 50
      colorpair = randcolor()
      @ 2,2 SAY "This is a test" COLOR &colorpair
      FOR n = 1 to 10000 && Slows it down a bit so you can see it!
      ENDFOR
   ENDFOR

   PROCEDURE randcolor
   numcolor = INT(RAND()*100)                 && Create a 2-digit number
   num1 = ALLTRIM(STR(numcolor/10))           && store 1st digit
   num2 = ALLTRIM(STR(INT(MOD(numcolor,10)))) && store 2nd digit
   * Select one valid color from random digit
   color1 = CHRTRAN(num1,"0123456789","WNRGBBGRNW")
   color2 = CHRTRAN(num2,"0123456789","WNRGBBGRNW")
   * Combine two colors to create color pair
   colstrg = color1 + "," + color2
   RETURN colstrg