How to overwrite the previous print to stdout in python?

Question

If I had the following code:

for x in range(10):
     print x

I would get the output of

1
2
etc..

What I

Answer 1

The accepted answer is not perfect. The line that was printed first will stay there and if your second print does not cover the entire new line, you will end up with garbage text.

To illustrate the problem save this code as a script and run it (or just take a look):

import time

n = 100
for i in range(100):
    for j in range(100):
        print("Progress {:2.1%}".format(j / 100), end="\r")
        time.sleep(0.01)
    print("Progress {:2.1%}".format(i / 100))

The output will look something like this:

Progress 0.0%%
Progress 1.0%%
Progress 2.0%%
Progress 3.0%%

What works for me is to clear the line before leaving a permanent print. Feel free to adjust to your specific problem:

import time

ERASE_LINE = '\x1b[2K' # erase line command
n = 100
for i in range(100):
    for j in range(100):
        print("Progress {:2.1%}".format(j / 100), end="\r")
        time.sleep(0.01)
    print(ERASE_LINE + "Progress {:2.1%}".format(i / 100)) # clear the line first

And now it prints as expected:

Progress 0.0%
Progress 1.0%
Progress 2.0%
Progress 3.0%