In Python, how to change text after it's printed?

Here's one way to do it.

print 'hello',
sys.stdout.flush()
...
print '\rhell ',
sys.stdout.flush()
...
print '\rhel ',
sys.stdout.flush()

You can probably also get clever with ANSI escapes. Something like

sys.stdout.write('hello')
sys.stdout.flush()
for _ in range(5):
    time.sleep(1)
    sys.stdout.write('\033[D \033[D')
    sys.stdout.flush()

For multi-line output, you can also clear the screen each time and reprint the entire thing:

from time import sleep
import os

def cls():
    os.system('cls' if os.name=='nt' else 'clear')

message = 'hello'
for i in range(len(message), 0, -1):
    cls()
    print message[:i]
    sleep(1)