I want to do is clear the console

[paul]

Hi, All I want to do is clear the console buffer (example "cls in Windows, "clear" in Unix).

I've googled this quite a bit and found nothing useful.
Sun's forums are completely useless, there are about 20 threads asking the same question and the only replies are to put in a loop with a bunch of System.out.println(). There is another "solution" but it's a nasty hack that involves editing system files (and thus makes it difficult to distribute my application!).

I'm just not convinced that there's "no way to do it."
Does ANYONE know how to clear the console??!
Thanks.

[henry_78]

Hi,
U can try to lunch a dos command from a java program.
try this:

Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process p = rt.exec("cmd /c cls");

Bye

[cruxblack]

It doesn't work henry, just tried it
Any other way besides that?

[brianhks]

Your out of luck on this one. Clearing the console or moving the cursor around the console is OS specific stuff. And OS specific is not what Java does. In all reality Java makes for a very poor command line application. It is limited to standard in and standard out (and standard err).

[henry_78]

Hi,
I really didn't undrestand good what u want to do, but i can tell u one thing.
If u want to clear the stdout buffer (the stdout is an output stream) u can do this: System.out.flush();
This command will will force all what u have in the stdout buffer to your console, at this point the buffer will be clear, then try the command that i gave u the other time to clear the screen...i hope it works please let me know, Bye.

[cruxblack]

I think paul there is trying to make the Java program he made do a clearscreen when a method is call, u know, like in a shell environment where u write cls, put and enter, and then the console would go clean

And Mr. henry there, i tried the code, it wont clear the screen

[henry_78]

I think i know now why it dosent work.
Because i dont have a reference to the java applicationn console.
I can have a refernce to a console i open...
There is a method in the class System ...System.console();
It returns a reference to the virtual machine console (if there is any).
I dont know if it might help u.

[brianhks]

Wow I haven't noticed that. I spend most of my time developing for 1.5. The Console class is definitely a step in the right direction for console based apps but, it looks like it still can't clear the screen.