How do you clear the console screen in C

Question

Is there a  proper  way to clear the console window in C  besides using system  cls

User · Answer

Using macros you can check if you re on Windows  Linux  Mac or Unix  and call the respective function depending on the current platform  Something as follows   void clear         if defined   linux       defined   unix       defined   APPLE            system  clear         endif       if defined  WIN32     defined  WIN64          system  cls         endif

User · Answer

Since you mention cls  it sounds like you are referring to windows   If so  then this KB item has the code that will do it   I just tried it  and it worked when I called it with the following code   cls  GetStdHandle  STD OUTPUT HANDLE

User · Answer

include  lt conio h gt    and use   clrscr

User · Answer

For portability  try this    ifdef  WIN32  include  lt conio h gt   else  include  lt stdio h gt   define clrscr   printf   e 1 1H e 2J    endif   Then simply call clrscr    On Windows  it will use conio h s clrscr    and on Linux  it will use ANSI escape codes   If you really want to do it  properly   you can eliminate the middlemen  conio  printf  etc   and do it with just the low-level system tools  prepare for a massive code-dump     ifdef  WIN32  define WIN32 LEAN AND MEAN  include  lt windows h gt   void ClearScreen       HANDLE                     hStdOut    CONSOLE SCREEN BUFFER INFO csbi    DWORD                      count    DWORD                      cellCount    COORD                      homeCoords     0  0       hStdOut   GetStdHandle  STD OUTPUT HANDLE      if  hStdOut    INVALID HANDLE VALUE  return        Get the number of cells in the current buffer      if   GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo  hStdOut   amp csbi    return    cellCount   csbi dwSize X  csbi dwSize Y        Fill the entire buffer with spaces      if   FillConsoleOutputCharacter      hStdOut       TCHAR           cellCount      homeCoords       amp count        return        Fill the entire buffer with the current colors and attributes      if   FillConsoleOutputAttribute      hStdOut      csbi wAttributes      cellCount      homeCoords       amp count        return        Move the cursor home      SetConsoleCursorPosition  hStdOut  homeCoords        else      WIN32  include  lt unistd h gt   include  lt term h gt   void ClearScreen       if   cur term           int result       setupterm  NULL  STDOUT FILENO   amp result         if  result  lt   0  return          putp  tigetstr   clear          endif

User · Answer

Well  C doesn t understand the concept of screen  So any code would fail to be portable  Maybe take a look at conio h or curses  according to your needs   Portability is an issue  no matter what library is used

User · Answer

just type clrscr    function in void main      as example   void main     clrscr    printf  Hello m fresher in programming c     getch       clrscr      function easy to clear screen

User · Answer

This should work  Then just call cls    whenever you want to clear the screen    using the method suggested before     include  lt stdio h gt  void cls         int x      for   x   0  x  lt  10  x                    printf   n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n

User · Answer

A workaround tested on Windows cmd exe   Linux Bash and zsh  and OS X zsh     include  lt stdlib h gt   void clrscr         system   cls  clear

User · Answer

printf   e 1 1H e 2J      This function will work on ANSI terminals  demands POSIX  I assume there is a version that might also work on window s console  since it also supports ANSI escape sequences    include  lt unistd h gt   void clearScreen       const char  CLEAR SCREEN ANSI     e 1 1H e 2J     write STDOUT FILENO  CLEAR SCREEN ANSI  12       There are some other alternatives  some of which don t move the cursor to  1 1

User · Answer

Windows   system  cls      Unix    system  clear     You could instead  insert newline chars until everything gets scrolled  take a look here   With that  you achieve portability easily

User · Answer

There is no C portable way to do this   Although various cursor manipulation libraries like curses are relatively portable   conio h is portable between OS 2 DOS and Windows  but not to  nix variants  The entire notion of a  quot console quot  is a concept outside of the scope of standard C  If you are looking for a pure Win32 API solution  There is no single call in the Windows console API to do this  One way is to FillConsoleOutputCharacter  of a sufficiently large number of characters   Or WriteConsoleOutput You can use GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo  to find out how many characters will be enough  You can also create an entirely new Console Screen Buffer and make the current one

User · Answer

The proper way to do it is by using tput or terminfo functions to obtain terminal properties and then insert newlines according to the dimensions

User · Answer

In Windows I have made the mistake of using system  quot clear quot    but that is actually for Linux The Windows type is system  quot cls quot    without  include conio h

[c] How do you clear the console screen in C?

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