# Blank lines in terminal **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 22, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/blank-lines-in-terminal/179338 "2009-11-22T20:07:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/revenantphoenix)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/blank-lines-in-terminal/179338/1 "2009-11-22T20:07:24Z")
I have an IRC bot I wrote, and I would like to have it so that in the console window, the bottom one or two lines are always blank. In other words, I want puts/print to output to the second line from the bottom instead of the bottommost line. I am aware that this could be done with curses/ncurses, but I have been unable to find any decent documentation for them in Ruby. If possible I would like to avoid the need to use (n)curses. ---
**Author:** ![revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/revenantphoenix)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 9:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/blank-lines-in-terminal/179338/2 "2009-11-22T21:08:48Z")
On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Dylan Lukes [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I have an IRC bot I wrote, and I would like to have it so that in the > console window, the bottom one or two lines are always blank. > > In other words, I want puts/print to output to the second line from the > bottom instead of the bottommost line. > > I am aware that this could be done with curses/ncurses, but I have been > unable to find any decent documentation for them in Ruby. > > If possible I would like to avoid the need to use (n)curses. May I ask why you want to avoid ncurses? It is, in general, a hard problem to do this sort of thing portably across platforms and terminals, and this is the exact problem curses is meant to solve. martin ---
**Author:** ![revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@revenantphoenix](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/revenantphoenix)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 7:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/blank-lines-in-terminal/179338/3 "2009-11-23T07:31:43Z")
Dylan Lukes wrote: > I have an IRC bot I wrote, and I would like to have it so that in the > console window, the bottom one or two lines are always blank. > > In other words, I want puts/print to output to the second line from the > bottom instead of the bottommost line. > > I am aware that this could be done with curses/ncurses, but I have been > unable to find any decent documentation for them in Ruby. 60 seconds of Google searching, and behold: > **[GitHub - eclubb/ncurses-ruby: A Ruby module for accessing the ncurses library](https://github.com/eclubb/ncurses-ruby)** > > A Ruby module for accessing the ncurses library. Contribute to eclubb/ncurses-ruby development by creating an account on GitHub. A quick stop at rdoc.info, and: [http://rdoc.info/projects/eclubb/ncurses-ruby](http://rdoc.info/projects/eclubb/ncurses-ruby) > If possible I would like to avoid the need to use (n)curses. You probably won’t easily be able to. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid