I know it is possible to consistently rewrite the last line displayed in the terminal with "\r", but I am having trouble figuring out if there is a way to go back and edit previous lines printed in the console.

What I would like to do is reprint multiple lines for a text-based RPG, however, a friend was also wondering about this for an application which had one line dedicated to a progress bar, and another describing the download.

i.e. the console would print:

Moving file: NameOfFile.txt  
Total Progress: [########              ] 40%

and then update appropriately (to both lines) as the program was running.

On Unix, use the curses module.

On Windows, there are several options:

• PDCurses: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/
• The HOWTO linked above recommends the Console module
• http://newcenturycomputers.net/projects/wconio.html
• http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/2.6/pywin32/win32console.html

Simple example using curses (I am a total curses n00b):

import curses
import time

def report_progress(filename, progress):
    """progress: 0-10"""
    stdscr.addstr(0, 0, "Moving file: {0}".format(filename))
    stdscr.addstr(1, 0, "Total progress: [{1:10}] {0}%".format(progress * 10, "#" * progress))
    stdscr.refresh()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    stdscr = curses.initscr()
    curses.noecho()
    curses.cbreak()

    try:
        for i in range(10):
            report_progress("file_{0}.txt".format(i), i+1)
            time.sleep(0.5)
    finally:
        curses.echo()
        curses.nocbreak()
        curses.endwin()