What is the use of formfeed and backspace escape strings in Java?

Question

Is there any practical usage for \r and \b in Java? Could someone give an example where it's used?

Answer 1

Formfeed escape is \f, not \r. The former is useful for clearing the screen in a console, whilst the second is useful for progress displays (as stated by aioobe).

\b can be used in progress displays also, for example, on a ICMP Ping, you could display a dot when a ping is sent and a \b when it is received to indicate the amount of packet loss.