Question

I am new to C programming and I wish to have a countdown take place on one line, for example, like this:

Time left: n

where n would be the only part of that line that was updated.

I’m talking about command line programming. I know how to do the count down, I just need help keeping it on one line and dynamically updating that line.

Answer 1

You can use \r to return the cursor to the start of a line and overwrite the line. So:

for (int i = 10; i > 0; i--) {
    printf("\rCountdown: %d ", i);
    fflush(stdout);
    sleep(1);
}
printf(" done.\n");

The fflush(stdout); is necessary because by default, stdout only flushes itself when its output buffer gets full, or a \n is output.