Delete last printed character python

5
votes

I am writing a program in Python and want to replace the last character printed in the terminal with another character.

Pseudo code is:

print "Ofen",
print "\b", # NOT NECCESARILY \b, BUT the wanted print statement that will erase the last character printed
print "r"

I'm using Windows8 OS, Python 2.7, and the regular interpreter.

All of the options I saw so far didn't work for me. (such as: \010, '\033[#D' (# is 1), '\r').

These options were suggested in other Stack Overflow questions or other resources and don't seem to work for me.

EDIT: also using sys.stdout.write doesn't change the affect. It just doesn't erase the last printed character. Instead, when using sys.stdout.write, my output is:

Ofenr # with a square before 'r'

My questions:

  1. Why don't these options work?
  2. How do I achieve the desired output?
  3. Is this related to Windows OS or Python 2.7?
  4. When I find how to do it, is it possible to erase manually (using the wanted eraser), delete the '\n' that is printed in python's print statement?
3
pythonpython-2.7printing
Did you just reject my edit and then paste my edit as your own? - Matt Goodrich
No I didn't, the community rejected your edit, I approved it. - Ofer Arial
Oh I see. I was confused because my activity said the edit was rejected, but I saw the changes here. Sorry! - Matt Goodrich

3 Answers

5
votes

When using print in python a line feed (aka '\n') is added. You should use sys.stdout.write() instead.

import sys
sys.stdout.write("Ofen")
sys.stdout.write("\b")
sys.stdout.write("r")
sys.stdout.flush()

Output: Ofer

4
votes

You can also import the print function from Python 3. The optional end argument can be any string that will be added. In your case it is just an empty string.

from __future__ import print_function # Only needed in Python 2.X

print("Ofen",end="")
print("\b",end="") # NOT NECCESARILY \b, BUT the wanted print statement that will erase the last character printed
print("r")

Output

Ofer
-2
votes

I think string stripping would help you. Save the input and just print the string upto the length of string -1 .

Instance 

x = "Ofen"
print (x[:-1] + "r")

would give you the result

Ofer

Hope this helps. :)