Console Screen Tearing

[GbX36Up4]

I'm currently trying to create a console based game with characters(keyboard, ASCII, etc.) as graphics. So far it is working but I have one problem. Whenever I clear the screen (using system("cls") or the windows handle way,) I get tears in the screen. If anyone could point me in the direction of a solution to this problem I would appreciate it.

[BlackSheep]

The true fix for this is to use a graphics library. The tearing you get is most likely the text being re-written to the screen since it's (obviously) single-buffered. Read this:
http://www.cplusplus.com/articles/G13hAqkS/
A very nice library to start with is SFML. It's extremely intuitive and has the binaries for windows if that's your OS. SFML itself is a 2D library, but it is also useful for creating an openGL context and handling input and such if you ever graduate to 3D graphics.

EDIT: Here's the site:
http://www.sfml-dev.org/
And the downloads:
http://www.sfml-dev.org/download.php

[GbX36Up4]

I already know a graphics library called Allegro. I would use it but since I am using Winsock in my program the structure Bitmap is being used by both of them and gives me an error.

[BlackSheep]

SFML has support for networking as well if that's something you also need.
If you want to stick to Allegro try including <winalleg.h> right after <allegro.h>. Should get rid of the re-definitions.

[GbX36Up4]

Thanks a ton! I knew I could do this with windows.h but not with winsock2.h