How do I remove text from the console in PHP?

Question

My goal is to print an updating progress percentage to the console (in both Linux and Windows). Currently I just print out the percentage each 10%, but I would prefer that it updated itself every 1% without filling the screen with percentages.

Is it possible to remove text you have written to the console in PHP?

Alternatively use `print "17%\r";`. If you use carriage return `\r` instead of newline `\n`, the cursor will be placed at the beginning of the line, which allows the next output to overwrite it. — mario, May 22 '11 at 19:06
mario: Thanks! That answers a question I haven't asked yet :-) — Hubro, May 22 '11 at 21:31

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 22 '11 at 19:00

3

echo chr(8);

will print a backspace character.

answered May 22 '11 at 19:00

Oswald

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Nice! This works in the windows CMD. Will this work in Linux though? – Hubro May 22 '11 at 19:07

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 26 '22 at 22:11

very simple Note the example below

$removeLine = function (int $count = 1) {
    foreach (range(1,$count) as $value){
        echo "\r\x1b[K"; // remove this line
        echo "\033[1A\033[K"; // cursor back
    }
};

echo "-----------------------------\n";
echo "---------  Start  -----------\n";
echo "-----------------------------\n";
sleep(2);
$removeLine(3);

echo 'hi';
sleep(2);
$removeLine();

echo 'how are you ?';
die();

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 22 '11 at 19:16

0

See Zend_ProgressBar

answered May 22 '11 at 19:16

Alex Howansky

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 22 '11 at 20:03

PEAR's Console_ProgressBar is useful for this sort of use case.

To clear the console entirely, you can use:

if($_SERVER['SHELL']) {
  print chr(27) . "[H" . chr(27) . "[2J";
}

which is quite a bit easier than keeping track of how many characters to backspace.

How do I remove text from the console in PHP?

4 Answers4

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