How can I print a string to the console at specific coordinates in C++?

Question

I\'m trying to print characters in the console at specified coordinates. Up to now I have been using the very ugly printf(\"\\033[%d;%dH%s\\n\", 2, 2, \"str\");

Answer 1

A few improvements to your function:

void printToCoordinates(int x, int y, const char *format, ...)
{
    va_list args;
    va_start(args, format);
    printf("\033[%d;%dH", x, y);
    vprintf(format, args);
    va_end(args);
    fflush(stdout);
}

This version:

• allows you to use any arbitrary format string and variable argument lists
• automatically flushes stdout without printing a newline
• uses x and y in the format string (your use of x and x may have been a typo)

However, because varargs is essentially a C feature and doesn't really understand C++ objects, you'd have to call it like this:

printToCoordinates(10, 10, "%s", text.c_str());

A better option really is to use curses (for Unix-like platforms) or Win32 console functions (for Windows) as mentioned in other answers.