Is it possible to print a table of a 'for loop' at the same position without moving ahead the lines of the Terminal using python?

Question

Here is a code example to print some numbers at the same cursor position of the console, without moving the characters from place.

Code Example

from sys import stdout
from time import sleep
for i in range(1,20):
    stdout.write("\r%d" % i)
    stdout.flush()
    sleep(1)
stdout.write("\n") # move the cursor to the next line

Question

Does this same approach work if we need to print an entire table over and over at the same position, without creating a new table line, making it altogether static.

My aim is to make the code given at the buttom to work, same as the code example shared above.

When printing a table on console the headers of the table must not change, but the values (row elements) passed must dynamically change at the same cell positions, iterating the values passed.

Below is the code I aimed for.

from prettytable import PrettyTable
from sys import stdout
from time import sleep

t = PrettyTable(['Name', 'Age'])
lis = [['Alice', 25],['Alice', 20],['Man', 20]]
for x in lis:
    t.add_row(x)
    print(t, end='\r')
    t.clear_rows()
    sleep(1)
stdout.write("\n")

In here, iterating the print(t, end='\r') is printing the tables everytime onto a new line.

I wish to see that table printed for the first iteration (for loop), gets completely replaced by the tables of the next iterations and so on.

There is no `curses` here; you are simply returning the cursor to the beginning of the line with `\r`. If you want to move back to a position on a previous line, you do need `curses` (or some other form of cursor addressing). — tripleee, Oct 07 '20 at 06:32
@triplee I found a good solution for this using `curses` as you said, but the question is now closed. I will post the answer soon, when the question reopens. — Thinker-101, Oct 08 '20 at 10:53
I'm not sure this is still clear enough to be reopened, and even then I guess it will be likely to end up being closed again as a duplicate of an existing question. Code which doesn't do what you want is a terrible way to communicate what you do want. — tripleee, Oct 08 '20 at 10:57
Alright. I accept. Just edited the question better. The duplicate question I created before has been closed already. — Thinker-101, Oct 08 '20 at 11:05

Thinker-101 · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-09T06:13:41.700

curseXcel and curses can make this happen. Please check all the different methods available with curseXcel.

Prerequisites

Install

sudo pip install curseXcel

Code

import curses
from curseXcel import Table
from time import sleep
def main(stdscr):
    y = 0
    table = Table(stdscr, 2, 4 ,10, 45, 20, spacing=2, col_names=True) # This sets the table rows, columns, width, height and spacing.
    for x in [['Name',0], ['Age',1], ['Job',2],['Country', 3]]:
     # This sets the header columns.
        table.set_column_header(x[0],x[1])
    table.delete_row(1) # This deletes the additional row.
    nameList = [["Alice", 25, 'Painter', 'AUS'],["Bob", 32, 'cop', 'UK'],["Thinker", 20, 'coder', 'UK'],["Adam", 70, 'None', 'USA'],["Jessi", 14, 'None', 'BZA'],["Leo", 30, 'Army', 'India']]
# This above list contains data you need to loop through
    while (y != 'q'): # This makes the loop to repeat indefinitely.
        #y=  stdscr.getkey()
        for x in nameList:
            sleep(1)
            # This sets the elements of the list to the respective positions.
            table.set_cell(0,0, x[0])
            table.set_cell(0,1, x[1])
            table.set_cell(0,2, x[2])
            table.set_cell(0,3, x[3])
            table.refresh()

stdscr = curses.initscr()
curses.noecho()
curses.cbreak()
stdscr.keypad(True)

curses.wrapper(main)

curses.nocbreak()
stdscr.keypad(False)
curses.echo()
curses.endwin() # End curses

Output

This what the output looks like

Is it possible to print a table of a 'for loop' at the same position without moving ahead the lines of the Terminal using python?

1 Answers1

Code