PRABHA — Turbo C graphics.h inside VS Code

Your college Turbo C / Borland C++ programs, compiled by a modern compiler and drawn in a VS Code panel. No DOSBox. No Turbo C. No emulator.

#include <graphics.h>
#include <conio.h>
int main() {
    int gd = DETECT, gm;
    initgraph(&gd, &gm, "");
    setcolor(YELLOW);
    circle(320, 240, 100);
    outtextxy(250, 400, "PRABHA");
    getch();
    closegraph();
    return 0;
}

Press Ctrl+Alt+G (or the ▶ button) and it runs.

What's implemented (v3.0.0 — everything)

Setup & modes — initgraph initwindow closegraph detectgraph graphresult grapherrormsg getgraphmode setgraphmode restorecrtmode getmaxmode getmodename getdrivername graphdefaults

Drawing — putpixel getpixel line lineto linerel moveto moverel rectangle circle arc ellipse drawpoly getarccoords

Filling — bar bar3d fillpoly fillellipse pieslice sector floodfill, all 12 BGI patterns plus setfillpattern user patterns

Attributes — setcolor getcolor setbkcolor getbkcolor getmaxcolor setfillstyle getfillsettings getfillpattern setlinestyle getlinesettings setwritemode (XOR_PUT really XORs) setpalette getpalette setallpalette setrgbpalette getpalettesize

Text — outtext outtextxy settextstyle settextjustify setusercharsize textheight textwidth gettextsettings, horizontal and vertical direction, all justifications, character sizes 1–10

Images — imagesize getimage putimage with COPY_PUT XOR_PUT OR_PUT AND_PUT NOT_PUT

Viewport & pages — setviewport getviewsettings clearviewport cleardevice with real clipping, and 4 video pages via setactivepage / setvisualpage for flicker-free animation

conio.h (complete) — clrscr clreol delline insline gotoxy wherex wherey window textmode gettextinfo _setcursortype textcolor textbackground textattr highvideo lowvideo normvideo cprintf cputs putch cscanf cgets getch getche kbhit ungetch, with the real scan codes (KEY_UP, KEY_LEFT, KEY_F1 …) after a leading 0

dos.h — delay sleep sound nosound (beeps play in the panel)

PRABHA extras — prabha_flush(), prabha_set_auto_flush(ms), prabha_frame_count(), prabha_version()

How it works

The runtime is a real 640×480, 16-colour, 4-page framebuffer written in C. getpixel returns exactly what putpixel wrote, getimage/putimage round-trip byte for byte, and floodfill is a genuine scanline fill. Frames are RLE-compressed and sent as bounding-box deltas over a private pipe, so your program's own printf and scanf keep stdout and stdin to themselves — a 30-frame animation costs about 25 KB of traffic.

getch() and kbhit() read real keystrokes from the panel: click the screen once so it has keyboard focus.

Runs your old Turbo C++ code unchanged

College labs still teach the classic Turbo C++ / Borland C++ style, which a modern compiler rejects outright:

#include <iostream.h>      // no .h header on a modern compiler
#include <conio.h>
void main()                // modern C++ requires int main()
{
    clrscr();
    int a, b;
    cout << "Sum? ";        // unqualified cout/cin — no std::
    cin >> a >> b;
    cout << "= " << a + b;
    getch();
}

PRABHA runs this exactly as written — no edits, no conversion. Turbo C++ compatibility is on by default and handles:

• #include <iostream.h>, <conio.h>, <iomanip.h>, <fstream.h>, <strstream.h>, <constream.h>, <process.h> — the old header names resolve
• cout / cin / endl / setw and friends without std::
• void main() and void main(void) — adapted to a real entry point
• gets() — removed from modern C/C++, provided here as a safe bounded version

Your source file on disk is never modified — the adaptation happens on a temporary copy at compile time. If you only write standard modern C++ and want strict compilation, set prabha.turboCppCompatibility to false.

Requirements

A C compiler on your PATH:

Point prabha.cCompiler / prabha.cppCompiler at something else if you like.

Commands

Settings

prabha.cCompiler · prabha.cppCompiler · prabha.extraFlags · prabha.scale (panel size, default 1.5×) · prabha.keepPanelOpenOnExit

Examples included

Shapes gallery, bouncing ball with page flipping, moving car, live sine wave, arrow-key game, and a pure-conio menu. Run PRABHA: Open Example…

Honest limits

• 640×480 in 16 colours is the only mode — that is VGA VGAHI, the mode nearly every Turbo C lab program used.
• registerbgidriver, registerbgifont, installuserdriver and installuserfont return real BGI error codes instead of pretending: there are no .BGI or .CHR files here.
• Stroked fonts (TRIPLEX, GOTHIC…) are approximated with the built-in 8×8 font scaled up one extra step, so layouts land close to the original but the letterforms are not Borland's.

MIT © Kanak Prabhakar