Clearing the Ms Dos screen in java?

Ginger1329 · 11-13-2003, 07:14 PM

Please help! how do i clear the ms dos screen that I am printing out to when writing in java. I assume that one there is an escape sequence i can't find somewhere that will clear the screen or two there is a way in insert Ms Dos commands into my java code, please someone let me know how or even if you have a suggestion!

megaspaz · 11-13-2003, 07:46 PM

this works in linux, not sure if it would in windows, but i'm thinking it should.

import this:

Code:

import java.lang.Runtime;

in your class method where you want to clear the dos screen, declare a Runtime object:

Code:

Runtime rt;

and then run the rt.exec() command in your class's method:

Code:

rt.exec("cls");

that rt.exec() command takes a string for the command to run and cls is the command to clear the dos screen. hope that helps you.

oulevon · 11-13-2003, 07:48 PM

What do you mean by clearing the screen? I'm guessing that a MsDos screen consists of a prompt. If you want to have that not shown, you could do something along the lines of printing several newlines, so that you have several blank lines (whatever the amount you need to make the screen go blank). There is an escape sequence for this \n. So you could do something like the following:

String blank = "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n";
System.out.println(blank);

That would give you plenty of blank lines. Is that what you mean?

LogicG8 · 11-13-2003, 09:40 PM

I don't think this is portable, but you can use
ANSI escape sequences to clear the screen.

Code:

public class AnsiClear {
	public static void main(String args[]) {
		String ANSI_CLEAR_SEQ = "\u001b[2J";
		String ANSI_NORMAL_SEQ = "\u001b[0m";

		System.out.println(ANSI_CLEAR_SEQ);
		System.out.println("This won't work everyhwere...");
		try {System.in.read();}catch(Exception e){}
		System.out.println(ANSI_CLEAR_SEQ);
	}
}