How do I manipulate console cursor position in dotnet core?

Question

How do I manipulate console cursor position in dotnet core?

As far as I can see in https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/blob/master/src/System.Console/src/System/Console.cs there is no way to manipualte cursor position.

Does it mean that it's impossible on windows and will be possible on linux via ANSI escape sequences?

Answer 1

In ConsolePal class you have private static IntPtr OutputHandle(that is the handle of the console on which you want to move the cursor), so int this class you have to expose a method to set the cursor position. In this method you have to call system API SetConsoleCursorPosition(IntPtr hConsoleOutput, COORD cursorPosition);. COORD is:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
internal struct COORD
{
    internal short X;
    internal short Y;
} 

You can add DllImport of the previous method in Interop.mincore class (because it seems that is here where system DllImport are made), so somewhere where you want you can:

internal partial class Interop
{
    internal partial class mincore
    {
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
        internal static extern bool SetConsoleCursorPosition(IntPtr hConsoleOutput, COORD cursorPosition);
    }
}

The method to expose in ConsolePal can look like this:

public static void SetCursorPosition(int left, int top)
{
    IntPtr consoleOutputHandle = OutputHandle;
    COORD cursorPosition = new COORD {
        X = (short) left,
        Y = (short) top
    };
    Interop.mincore.SetConsoleCursorPosition(consoleOutputHandle, cursorPosition;
}

Note: add to the method some input check and some check on Interop.mincore.SetConsoleCursorPosition returned value

And in Console class simply expose a method that call ConsolePal.SetCursorPosition

public static void SetCursorPosition(int left, int top)
{
     ConsolePal.SetCursorPosition(left, top);
}

I didn't test the code above so it may contain errors.

Edit

As @Jcl stated, it may not be welcome to use a custom version of .NET. In this case you can write a simple class to move the cursor(even this solution is only for Windows):

static class MyAwesomeConsoleExtensions
{
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    private static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(int nStdHandle);
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    private static extern bool SetConsoleCursorPosition(IntPtr hConsoleOutput, COORD cursorPosition);
    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    private struct COORD
    {
        internal short X;
        internal short Y;
    }
    private const int STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11;

    public static void SetCursorPos(int left, int top)
    {
        IntPtr consoleOutputHandle = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
        COORD cursorPosition = new COORD
        {
            X = (short)left,
            Y = (short)top
        };
        SetConsoleCursorPosition(consoleOutputHandle, cursorPosition);
    }
}