'clear' does not clear the scrollback buffer

[evolbug]

shell clear command should clear the scrollback as well.

[kovidgoyal]

No, it should not. clear clears only the screen.

[kovidgoyal]

To be precise clear clears the scrollback buffer only if the E3 capability is defined, which kitty does not define.

[kovidgoyal]

And just for fun, surveying terminal behavior:
Terminals that use clear to clear scrollback
xterm, linux console, putty
Terminals that use clear to clear only the screen:
kitty, konsole, urxvt, all VTE based terminals such as gnome terminal

[kovidgoyal]

And with this commit, 1ef0106

you can use

printf '\E[H\E[3J'

to clear the scrollback buffer as well as the screen, if you need to.

[spl]

Also, since I came here looking for this and others might be interested, the following works [1, 2] to clear the screen and scrollback buffer in kitty, iTerm2, Apple Terminal, and presumably other Linux terminals (which I do not have at hand to test right now):

printf '\033[2J\033[3J\033[1;1H'

[collegeimprovements]

@spl it works as expected on kitty. How can I map it with cmd+k key on mac ?
I tried map cmd+k printf '\033[2J\033[3J\033[1;1H' and map super+k send_text all printf '\033[2J\033[3J\033[1;1H' with no success :|

[OmisNomis]

@collegeimprovements - did you figure out how to map it to cmd+k?

[nkouevda]

@collegeimprovements @OmisNomis Escape the ' and \:

map cmd+k send_text normal printf \'\\033[2J\\033[3J\\033[1;1H\'\x0d

Edit: As mentioned in #747, this also works:

map cmd+k combine : clear_terminal scrollback active : send_text normal \x0c

[OmisNomis]

@nkouevda - Thanks. Unfortunately map cmd+k combine : clear_terminal ..... has weird behaviour when text has been used (see gif below).

Escaping the ' and \ also didn't work - when using cmd+k, nothing happens.

[YarekTyshchenko]

So... how does one clear the scrollback (especially when looking at a running process)?
Edit: Ah, default binding of ctrl+shift+delete does what I need

[screendriver]

On macOS it's working on my machine with map ctrl+k combine : clear_terminal active : send_text normal \x0c

[YarekTyshchenko]

Hmm this is interesting: ctrl+shift+delete does clear the scrollback, but it doesn't de-allocate the ram storage. Perhaps this should be a new issue

[jpmvferreira]

On macOS it's working on my machine with map ctrl+k combine : clear_terminal active : send_text normal \x0c

It also works for me, but when I type something and then press the up key to find the previous command that starts or includes whatever I just wrote in zsh, as I usually do, it ignores whatever I write completely.

Is anybody facing this issue, and if so, how to work around it? (besides just doing a ctrl+c or typing something and running it)

[Chaitanyabsprip]

is there any way to disable scrollback buffer altogether?

[kovidgoyal]

ihttps://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/conf/#opt-kitty.scrollback_lines

[pritambera2000]

And with this commit, 1ef0106

you can use

printf '\E[H\E[3J'

to clear the scrollback buffer as well as the screen, if you need to.

i didn't find anything in config for this function . need help

[madhur]

map ctrl+k combine : clear_terminal active : send_text normal \x0c

This does not work for me on linux. Using kitty 0.39.1