Clearing only part of the console output

Question

What I want to do:

The cursor is initially blinking on the top left corner of the screen:

160 characters remaining
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Answer 1

Win32 console doesn't support escape sequences. You can use Console API.

Tiny example that clears first 3 characters at (0, 0) from your console

#include 

int main()
{
   HANDLE hOutput = ::GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

   COORD coord = {0,0};
   ::SetConsoleCursorPosition(hOutput, coord);

   char buff[] = "   ";
   ::WriteConsoleA(hOutput, buff, 3, NULL, NULL);

   return 0;
}

If you don't like Console API and wish to use ncurses analog, see there.