Question

Is there an easy way for Ruby to print in one line, then for the next print, it prints to the same line from the beginning.

I am trying to make a simple file counter shown on the stdout while files are being generated. It looks like a rapidly updated number at the same position on the screen.

Answer 1

could use \r..

while(true) do
  print "\\\r"
  print "|\r"
  print "/\r"
end

Will print the char and then move the cursor back and print over it, making a little spinner like thing. Else you can look at something like curses…. (https://github.com/rkumar/rbcurse for a ruby wrapper)