Move text cursor to particular screen coordinate?

Question

How can I set the cursor at the desired location on the console in C or C++?

I remember a function called gotoxy(x,y), but I think its deprecated. Is there any alternative?

Answer 1

Neither C nor C++ have any notion of a screen or console; they only see streams of bytes, which have no inherent display characteristics. There are a number of third-party APIs like ncurses to help you do that.

If you want a quick-n-dirty solution and the terminal you're working with understands ANSI escape sequences, then you can do things like

printf("\033[%d;%dH", row, col);

to move the cursor to a specific row and column (where the top left corner is {1,1}). You'd be better off using ncurses, though (or the equivalent for your platform).

Answer 2

Use SetConsoleCursorPosition.

There are a bunch of other functions in the same part of the MSDN library. Some of them may be useful too.

Answer 3

You can use this to set the cursor to specific coordinates on the screen, and then simply use cout<< or printf statement to print anything on the console:

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>

using namespace std;

void set_cursor(int,int);

int main()
{
     int x=0 , y=0;
     set_cursor(x,y);
     cout<<"Mohammad Usman Sajid";

     return 0;
}

void set_cursor(int x = 0 , int y = 0)
{
    HANDLE handle;
    COORD coordinates;
    handle = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    coordinates.X = x;
    coordinates.Y = y;
    SetConsoleCursorPosition ( handle , coordinates );
}

Answer 4

In case you are talking about ncurses library, the function you are after is move (row, column).

Answer 5

I use a really simple method. You don't overly need to know what a HANDLE is unless you're really diving into console applications, a COORD object is in the windows.h standard library and has two member data intergers X and Y. 0,0 is the top left corner and Y increases to go down the screen. You can use this command and just continue to use std::cout<< to print whatever you need.

#include <windows.h>

int main(void){
//initialize objects for cursor manipulation
HANDLE hStdout;
COORD destCoord;
hStdout = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

//position cursor at start of window
destCoord.X = 0;
destCoord.Y = 0;
SetConsoleCursorPosition(hStdout, destCoord);
}

Answer 6

This was on stackoverflow...

`#include <stdio.h>

// ESC-H, ESC-J (I remember using this sequence on VTs)
#define clear() printf("\033[H\033[J")

//ESC-BRACK-column;row (same here, used on terminals on an early intranet)
#define gotoxy(x,y) printf("\033[%d;%dH", (y), (x))

int main(void)
{
    clear();
    gotoxy(23, 12);
    printf("x");
    gotoxy(1, 24);
    return 0;
}`

Answer 7

For Windows: #include<windows.h>

#define cursor(x, y) SetConsoleCursorPosition(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), (COORD){x, y})

For Linux:

#define cursor(x,y) printf("\033[%d;%dH", x, y)

Answer 8

I figured out this to set the cursor.

#include <iostream>

void setPos(std::ostream& _os, const std::streamsize& _x, const std::streamsize& _y)
{
    char tmp = _os.fill();

    if(_y>0) {
            _os.fill('\n');
            _os.width(_y);
            _os << '\n';
    }
    if(_x>0) {
            _os.fill(' ');
            _os.width(_x);
            _os << ' ';
    }
    _os.flush();
    _os.fill(tmp);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    setPos(std::cout, 5, 5);
    std::cout << "foo" << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

To do more you'll need assumptions on the resolution or a lib like ncurses.