Is there a way to delete a character that has just been written using Console.WriteLine?

Contango picture Contango · Mar 4, 2011 · Viewed 43.9k times · Source

Is there any way to delete the last character from the console, i.e.

Console.WriteLine("List: apple,pear,");
// Somehow delete the last ',' character from the console.
Console.WriteLine(".");
// Now the console contains "List: apple,pear."

Sure, I could create a string first then print that to the console, but I'm just curious to see if I can delete characters directly from the console.

Answer

John Arlen picture John Arlen · Mar 4, 2011

"\b" is ASCII backspace. Print it to back up one char.

Console.Write("Abc");
Console.Write("\b");
Console.Write("Def");

outputs "AbDef";

As pointed out by Contango and Sammi, there are times where overwriting with a space is required:

Console.Write("\b \b");