Clear console in Linux command prompt

Question

I know cls and clear exist. But after using these commands I can still scroll up and see my history. I want it to behave like a real reopening of the window.

Any help?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '14 at 12:17

3

Try reset: this clears the scrollback buffer in the terminal programs I've tried (xfce4-terminal, gnome-terminal and xterm).

answered Mar 05 '14 at 12:17

Flup

3,601

1

works in Terminal.app on os X too, BTW. – stib Mar 05 '14 at 12:32
If I do reset then it says: Erase is control-H (^H).. And control-H does nothing – Ozkan Mar 05 '14 at 12:34
but does it clear your scrollback? – Flup Mar 05 '14 at 12:34
No, my cursor is moved to top (like cls does) but I can still scroll up and see my history – Ozkan Mar 05 '14 at 12:47
Can you tell us what shell and terminal program you're using? – Flup Mar 05 '14 at 13:28
I'm using Putty and I have xterm terminal. I connect using SSH – Ozkan Mar 05 '14 at 13:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

1

In some terminals (xterm), ctrl-L clears the screen like reset, but faster. However in gnome-terminal ctrl-L behaves like clear.

Since I can't yet comment, just want to point out that Putty provides it's own terminal, unleses you use X11 tunneling.

Edit:

If you wish to clear the scrollback buffer via the command-line, use a previous superuser answer PuTTY: clear scrollback from commandline. This can be aliased as alias reset="clear && printf '\033[3J'".

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Community

1

answered Mar 05 '14 at 13:49

user19087

541

ctrl-L adds a new blank line. It doesn't do what I wanted. But thanks for your post – Ozkan Mar 05 '14 at 14:13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 05 '14 at 14:18

1

As the other stated, reset should do the trick. However, some terminal emulator (mintty from Cygwin if I'm right) doesn't even clear the scrollback buffer. In this case, they should have an option to do that directly. In mintty there is something like "Clear scrollback" when you do a right click in the window, or open the menu.

answered Mar 05 '14 at 14:18

piernov

2,046

Thanks for your help. It's indeed selectable in the Putty right click menu – Ozkan Mar 05 '14 at 14:30

Clear console in Linux command prompt

3 Answers3