Paste Ascii Art in center of console

Question

hi im trying to paste ascii art and make it into the center of the screen in C#, it prints normal text to the center of the screen but not ascii art, any ideas? (sorry im new to C#)

using System;

namespace ConsoleApp1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string textToEnter = @"



 /$$$$$$$$ /$$$$$$$$  /$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$$
|__  $$__/| $$_____/ /$$__  $$|__  $$__/
   | $$   | $$      | $$  \__/   | $$   
   | $$   | $$$$$   |  $$$$$$    | $$   
   | $$   | $$__/    \____  $$   | $$   
   | $$   | $$       /$$  \ $$   | $$   
   | $$   | $$$$$$$$|  $$$$$$/   | $$   
   |__/   |________/ \______/    |__/   
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                       
                                                  


                ";
            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0," + ((Console.WindowWidth / 2) + (textToEnter.Length / 2)) + "}", textToEnter));
            Console.Read();
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

`textToEnter.Length` is the total length of the text (i.e. every single character across all lines), which is not what you want. You want the maximum length of any single line in the text. Loop through each line, and find the length of the longest one. You also want to add padding at the beginning of each line, not at the start of the whole string (which is the same as at the start of the first line) — canton7, Nov 30 '20 at 15:55
Of looping through each line in a string? Loads of ideas [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1500194/c-looping-through-lines-of-multiline-string) -- I'd use `.Split('\n')` for simplicity — canton7, Nov 30 '20 at 15:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '20 at 16:27

One way to center the entire block of text as a whole rather than each individual line is to first determine the length of the longest line, then determine the left padding required to center that line, and then add that padding to the beginning of each line of the block of text.

We can do this by splitting on the NewLine character, padding each line, and then rejoining the modified lines again:

var lines = textToEnter.Split(new[] {Environment.NewLine}, StringSplitOptions.None);
var longestLength = lines.Max(line => line.Length);
var leadingSpaces = new string(' ', (Console.WindowWidth - longestLength) / 2);
var centeredText = string.Join(Environment.NewLine, 
    lines.Select(line => leadingSpaces + line));

Console.WriteLine(centeredText);

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '20 at 16:07

0

Probably this code snippet could help you to solve your issue:

using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(textToEnter))
{
    string line = string.Empty;
    do
    {
        line = reader.ReadLine();
        if (line != null)
        {
            Console.SetCursorPosition((Console.WindowWidth - line.Length) / 2, Console.CursorTop);
            Console.WriteLine(line);
        }
    } while (line != null);
}

The code is used to read the string line by line, and before printing it to the terminal, instead of formatting the string by adding white space before the text, we can just move the cursor where we need to print.

answered Nov 30 '20 at 16:07

falfab

13
5

This centers each line, rather than centering the block of text as a whole – canton7 Nov 30 '20 at 16:11
For the purpose of the question, the result is the same. It could encounter issues if deleting the white spaces at the end of each line. – falfab Nov 30 '20 at 16:13

Paste Ascii Art in center of console

2 Answers2

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