How can I print characters to screen like vim on linux?

Question

I'm writing a program that needs to modify the terminal screen buffer without using printf or stdout. On win32 I did that by using CreateConsoleScreenBuffer() and SetConsoleActiveScreenBuffer() then writing to the console screen buffer using WriteConsoleOutputCharacter(). I want to do this on linux as well (kind of like how vim prints things out) but I can't find any way. It would also be great if there was a way to do this using the standard library!

The [ncurses](https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/) library. — molbdnilo, Mar 04 '23 at 10:53
Alternatively you can manipulate the screen by printing [escape sequences](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man4/console_codes.4.html). — teapot418, Mar 04 '23 at 13:55

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 20 '23 at 23:50

0

OP says

without using printf or stdout

you could use stderr (which usually points to the same terminal), e.g.,

    echo '\033[H\033[J' >&2

to clear the screen while writing to stderr. Or you could use tput, e.g.,

    tput clear >&2

answered Apr 20 '23 at 23:50

Thomas Dickey

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How can I print characters to screen like vim on linux?

1 Answers1