Resetting your Terminal for each line printed

[ghenry]

Dear Master Monks,

I've got a blank mind this morning, as I am trying to think how to print on my console but wipe it after each print.

I am just testing like so, but I can't think of a better way (console width independent) than just printing a certain amount of blanks (by adding print ' ' x 80;):

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# Autoflush Output
$| = 1;

for my $num (1..100) {
    print 'Testing long line print', "\r";
    print 'Printing over', "\r";
    print $num, "\r";
    sleep 1;
}

Should I search for some Term::* module?

Thanks,
Gavin.

[Skeeve]

If I need something like that I always go for ANSI codes.
 print "\x27[2J";

[BrowserUk]

Try this

perl -wle"$|=1; printf qq[\r$_\t] and sleep 1 for reverse 1 .. 60"

[liverpole]

Hi ghenry,

From your question:

    (by adding print ' ' x 80;)

it looks like you mean you wish to clear to the end of the line, is that correct?

If so, use <escape>[K like so:

print "\e[K";

Some of the escape sequences I use all the time are:

print  "\e[H";              # Put the cursor on the first line
print  "\e[J";              # Clear from cursor to end of screen
print  "\e[H\e[J";          # Clear entire screen (just a combination 
+of the above)
print  "\e[K";              # Clear to end of current line (as stated 
+previously)
print  "\e[m";              # Turn off character attributes (eg. color
+s)
printf "\e[%dm", $N;        # Set color to $N (for values of 30-37, or
+ 100-107)
printf "\e[%d;%dH", $R, $C; # Put cursor at row $R, column $C (good fo
+r "drawing")

[Fletch]

There's Term::Cap which would let you find the current terminal's clear-to-end-of-line which you could print after your CR.

Of course if you want to go the whole way there's also Curses.

Update: The other solutions hard coding VT100-esque sequences are going to work on probably 70+% of the terminals you'll encounter (xterm, kconsole, iTerm, et al), but use Term::Cap if you want to make sure you work regardless of the terminal (presuming correct entries in the system's termcap file :).