Delete characters in a printed statement

Question

I'm trying to create a program, where it types whatever needs to be typed, and sometimes it makes a mistake which it corrects, as if an actual person is typing, here is my code:

import time
import sys
import random
import string 
import uuid

def my_random_string(string_length=4):
    random = str(uuid.uuid4())
    random = random.lower()
    random = random.replace("-","")
    return random[0:string_length]

def delay_print(s):
    for c in s:
        sys.stdout.write( '%s' % c )
        sys.stdout.flush()
        time.sleep(random.uniform(0.01,0.5))
        random_string = random.randint(0,6)
        if random_string == 5:
            sys.stdout.write(my_random_string(2))
            time.sleep(0.1)
            #delete the two characters

delay_print("Hello, and welcome to the Enrichment Centre")

I don't know how to delete the two characters that I placed.

You can return to the beginning of the line with `\r` and start from there. — Peter Wood, Dec 07 '15 at 12:42
@PeterWood, that would work for something else, however I want to make it work for this specifically. — Max, Dec 07 '15 at 12:47
@SylentNyte See [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2856344/backspace-character-weirdness). You need to type a backspace-space-backspace to make whatever was there disappear. — Peter Wood, Dec 07 '15 at 12:47
According to [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/20643196/4985733), IDLE does not support character escaping such as backspace. — Martin Evans, Dec 08 '15 at 11:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '15 at 12:49

The backspace character \b will go back before your previous character, however it then needs to be typed over to actual go blank. The easiest way to do that is to then enter a space. However you're then spaced in one character too far, so you need another backspace to go before the space. And you want to loop over this happening twice to actually remove both of the random characters. This is what I did to make it most convincingly look like someone typing:

    if random_string == 5:
        sys.stdout.write(my_random_string(2))
        sys.stdout.flush()
        time.sleep(0.1)
        for _ in range(2):
            sys.stdout.write('\b \b')
            sys.stdout.flush()
            time.sleep(0.1)

Delete characters in a printed statement

1 Answers1