[SOLVED] Printing text on the same line as previous input

Printing text on the same line as previous input

This is essentially what I want to do:

Write-Host "Enter username: " -NoNewLine
$username = Read-Host -NoNewLine
if ($username -eq "") {
    Write-Host "None"
}

If the user were to enter nothing, then this would be my desired output: Enter username: None

However I have been unable to find a way to read user input without it generating a new line, and -NoNewLine does not work with Read-Host.

Solution

You should be able to do this by first recording the position of the terminal's cursor using the PSHostRawUserInterface.CursorPosition property, which can be found at $host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition

After prompting for the username and determining that it's blank, reset the cursor back to its original position and then output the desired text.

Example code:

# Output the prompt without the new line
Write-Host "`rEnter username: " -NoNewLine

# Record the current position of the cursor 
$originalPosition = $host.UI.RawUI.CursorPosition

# Prompt for the username
$username = Read-Host

# Check the response with the IsNullOrWhiteSpace function to also account for empty strings
if ([string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($username)) {
    # Set the position of the cursor back to where it was before prompting the user for a response
    [Console]::SetCursorPosition($originalPosition.X,$originalPosition.Y)

    # Output the desired text
    Write-Host "None"
}