Tip : Flush the keyboard buffer from C#

~ Nish

Here’s another tip from an MSDN forum discussion. Someone wanted to know how to flush the keyboard buffer in a C# console application.

Here’s a simple hack to do this :

private static void FlushKeyboard()
{
    while (Console.In.Peek() != -1)
        Console.In.Read();
}

Now you can use it as follows :

char x = (char)Console.Read();
FlushKeyboard();
char y = (char)Console.Read();
Console.WriteLine("{0}, {1}", x, y);

Even if you enter more than a single character after the first call to Read(), the second Read() will not be affected.

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Published by Nish

2 thoughts on “Tip : Flush the keyboard buffer from C#”

  1. It is really useful for resolving
    System.FormatException :
    “Input string was not in a correct format.”

    where we try to repeatedly excute code like
    ——————————————————-
    Console.WriteLine(“Please press enter key”);
    Console.Read();
    intA = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
    intB = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

    Reply

  2. Thank you, for this solution.

    I was looking for something like that, the only thing i changed was Console.In.Read() for this Console.In.ReadLine() becouse I needed for readline and worked like a charm!

    Grettings from Mexico!

    Reply

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