"\r" is leaving characters from previous line

Question

Example:

sys.stdout.write("\raaaa")
sys.stdout.flush()
sys.stdout.write("\rbb")
sys.stdout.flush()
# output: bbaa

so \r is returning to the begining of the line overwriting only characters within the new string range, is there any solution to this problem without using spaces to overwrite the rest characters ?

ANSI escape sequences doesn't do the trick neither.

Answer 1

import sys

_lastlen = 0
def overwrite(s):
    global _lastlen
    sys.stdout.write("\r" + s + " "*(_lastlen - len(s)))
    sys.stdout.flush()
    _lastlen = len(s)

overwrite("aaaa")
overwrite("bb")