How do you put a string starting from a specific position?

Question

I've been trying to figure out a shortcut in putting a long string text positioned in a specific coordinate without using Console.SetCursorPosition and Console.WriteLine multiple times. I plan on using the shortcut especially in positioning ASCII text.

I've tried doing Console.SetCursorPosition then the @ to put the long string text altogether only to discover that only the first line is affected by the Console.SetCursorPosition.

Console.SetCursorPosition(50, 1);
Console.WriteLine("Hello");
Console.SetCursorPosition(50, 2);
Console.WriteLine("World");
Console.ReadKey();

I expect the output to display Hello somehow at the middle with World just below it.

Answer 1

You can write a function to do this. For example:

static void Print(int left, int top, params string[] lines)
{
    foreach (string line in lines)
    {
        Console.SetCursorPosition(left, top);
        Console.WriteLine(line);
        top++;
    }
}

And call it like this:

Print(50, 1, "Hello", "World");

Or equivalently like this:

string[] lines = { "Hello", "World" };
Print(50, 1, lines);

If the text consists of words separated by spaces, and you want to put a single word on each line, then you can split the text at spaces, inside the function. That way you would be able to pass a single line of text.

static void Print(int left, int top, params string[] lines)
{
    foreach (string line in lines)
    {
        string[] words = line.Trim().Split(new char[] { ' ' });
        foreach (string word in words)
        {
            Console.SetCursorPosition(left, top);
            Console.WriteLine(word);
            top++;
        }
    }
}

And call it like this:

Print(50, 1, "Hello World");