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Lack of Serial Monitor support for control characters is not documented #6794

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@HiTechHiTouch

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@HiTechHiTouch

It appears that sending a value 0x0d to the IDE Serial Monitor does nothing. Back space prints a blob instead of positioning the next character back 1 position. Line feed not only does a line feed, but also adds a carriage return instead of positioning the next character 1 line below and 1 to the right of the previous character.

As with TTYs from the beginning of time, 0x0d should reposition the "next print" location to the first position of the line. The next character output should appear at the left end (the start) of the same (current) line -- no line feed should be done, and any previous character should be overwritten. Back space 0x08 should move the "next print" position one character to the left (respecting the left margin). Line Feed 0x0a should move the "next print" position to the next line, leaving its distance from the margin unchanged.

Many have tried to repeatedly refill just one line on the serial monitor to avoid data scrolling off the screen. They want to rewrite a constantly updated value to the same location of the screen, rather than producing a flood of lines where updated values quickly push headings and other information off the screen. All report that they can not find a sequence of control characters to accomplish the task.

Further, the IDE documentation does not specify what control characters are honored by the serial monitor. If nothing else, please document what will be the result of this little program snipit:

for (uint8_t i = 0; i < 32; i++) { Serial.write(i) }; // output directed to IDE serial monitor.

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