UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello everyone,

My question is quite simple, even if I didn't find an answer. I would want a command (maybe clear with some options ?) that can do the following : clear completely the console, as it is when we start a console for the first time.

My problem is that I sometimes display a lot of informations on the console (such as elements of matrices), and if I do this operation two times, it's hard to see distinctly where starts the information of the second computation.

Thanks to all the ones who will help me.

I sometimes have the same issue - this is an alias that helps me to see the new output
clearly

Code:

cls="clear && banner '----' "

This creates a custom command -- cls

Thanks for your answer that is helpful.

Nevertheless, do you know if it is possible to completely clear the screen ?

Sounds like you want to reset the terminal

Code:

tput reset

Unfortunately, this is not what I want. When I use

Code:

tput reset

I can use in the console the vertical scrollbar to access the previous informations displayed on the console. What I want, is a command that make the console absolutely empty of previous displays (without being forced to start a new console each time).

I don't know of any 'harder' reset command for terminals that don't clear their scrollback on a terminal reset. Remember where these things came from -- hardware terminals that had no scrollback; the scrollback buffer is an extension not controlled by the terminal session. There might be an option in your terminal emulator itself.

If you have no better option you can blow away the buffer with

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero count=16 2> /dev/null | tr '\0' '\n' ; reset

...to print 16*512 newlines then clear the screen.