Backspace printing?

[daniel asdf maan]

Hello, I was just bored and wanted to do some text replacing stuff.

Here's my code:

#include <stdio.h> // printf
#include <unistd.h> // for the sleep function

int main ()
{
    printf( "Hello World!" );
    usleep(1000000); // usleep is in microseconds (10 to the -6)
    printf( "\b\b\b\b\b\bMyself!\n" ); // Backspace 6 times and print Myself!
    return 0;
}

What it's supposed to do is print "Hello World!" into my console, and wait 1 second, and then replace the "World!" with "Myself!"
Only problem is, when I execute it, it delays one second and then prints "Hello Myself!" without printing "Hello World!" preliminarily.

Is there a specific reason why this is happening, and if so, can I fix it?

Thanks in advance,
-Daniel

[shadow123]

Hello,

on Windows this code doesn't work in the expected way, too. After changing the sleep-call to the WinAPI specific one it works!

#include <stdio.h> // printf
//#include <unistd.h> // for the sleep function
#include <windows.h>

int main ()
{
    printf( "Hello World!" );
    Sleep(5000); // usleep is in microseconds (10 to the -6)
    printf( "\b\b\b\b\b\bMyself!\n" ); // Backspace 6 times and print Myself!
    return 0;
}

[ne555]

Is there a specific reason why this is happening, and if so, can I fix it?

standard output is buffered.
It will not write to the screen till the buffer is full. You can change that by flushing the stream.

[shadow123]

@ne555
This was my first thought, too. But it seems that the (u)sleep function doesn't halt thread execution properly. Don't know if this is a Windows issue or if I simply don't use it in the right way. I'm using the MingW compiler with the current Code::Blocks IDE.

[daniel asdf maan]

Oh yay, thanks it works :)

#include <stdio.h> // printf
#include <unistd.h> // for the sleep function
#include <iostream> // for flushing

int main ()
{
    printf( "Hello World!" );
    cout.flush();
    usleep(1000000); // usleep is in microseconds (10 to the -6)
    printf( "\b\b\b\b\b\bMyself!\n" ); // Backspace 6 times and print Myself!
    return 0;
}

thanks

[LauraArnold]

the more i look at it, it seems that my terminal is not deleting characters that should be removed. For example when im doing a "reverse-i-search" the previous things i've typed just keep printing instead of being overwritten. Is there some way to reinstall the terminal only...i really don't want to have to reinstall ubuntu again.

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