Print a carriage return in java on windows on console

Question

On my OS X machine, the following line gives me a nice and easy way to track the state of my loops:

for (int index = 0; index < 100; index++)
    for (int subIndex = index; subIndex < 100; subIndex++)
        System.out.print("\r" + index + "/" + subIndex + "       ");

But when I try to run the same thing on windows, it prints out newlines instead of a carriage return. How can I achieve the same simple method of tracking the process on windows?

Kutuzov

Answer 1

I had the statement and it worked in the command prompt

System.out.println("This is Java"+'\r'+"That");

and gives me output as

That is Java

That means it works perfectly.

Note: I run it in Windows 7 with JDK 7 and simple notepad.

It is the problem of eclipse, it will take \r as a new line character and will print

This is Java
That

as output

Excerpt

I'm running on Windows XP currently - maybe that makes a difference? – Kutuzov

Through eclipse... On OS X, I use IntelliJ where it works just fine. I'll give it a try on command prompt now. – Kutuzov

As I have already mentioned, problem is with Eclipse not with Java. Without using extra tool like Intellij, it will not work in eclipse. – Excerpt

Answer 2

If you are on Eclipse, you have to enable the control character option on the Console Window.

To enable it, open the Eclipse preferences and select Run/Debug > Console. Then select "Interpret ASCII control characters" and "Interpret Carriage Return (\r) as control character".

Alarcon

Answer 3

By "Windows" you mean cmd.exe? And you want to overwrite to the line you previously output, right? Unfortunately I think you need to invoke this Win32 API somehow in order to achieve it

• SetConsoleCursorPosition
  • Cf. Calling Win32 API method from Java

Maybe other Java gurus can provide better answer ...

Kiyohara

I am running the program in eclipse on a windows machine. Haven't tried it on CMD yet. – Kutuzov