There's several tricks you can use, either using a module like Curses that takes advantage of positioning on a term, or by using characters like \r or \b which, on most unixen terms, will back up the cursor position. You might want to look at this node that asks a similar question for a full list of ideas.

Note that if you're just putting a line of symbols on the screen, without extra decoration, you can always print those out sequentially when they are needed (eg, one or two characters at a time), without an extra modules.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
"I can see my house from here!"
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important