Clear a terminal screen for real

Question

Using the clear command on the terminal only fools the user into thinking the screen has been cleared...you can still see output from the previous commands when

Answer 1

Try reset. It clears up the terminal screen but the previous commands can be accessed through arrow or whichever key binding you have.

Answer 2

The following link will explain how to make that alias permanent so you don't have to keep typing it in.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/17536/how-do-i-create-a-permanent-bash-alias

These are the steps detailed at that link.

1. vim ~/.bashrc or gedit ~/.bashrc or what ever text editor you like
2. put alias cls='printf "\033c"' at the bottom of the file
3. save and exit
4. . ~/.bashrc (and yes there should be a space between . and ~)
5. now check to see if everything worked!

I take no credit for this information just passing it along.

Answer 3

None of the answers I read worked in PuTTY, so I found a comment on this article:

In the settings for your connection, under "Window->Behavior" you'll find a setting "System Menu Appears on ALT alone". Then CTRL+L,ALT,l (that's a lower case L) will scroll the screen and then clear the scrollback buffer.

(relevant to the OP because I am connecting to an Ubuntu server, but also apparently relevant no matter what your server is running.)

Answer 4

echo -e "\e[3J"

This works in Linux Machines

Answer 5

Compile this app.

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>

int main()
{
  char str[1000];
  memset(str, '\n', 999);
  str[999] = 0;
  std::cout << str << std::endl;
  return 0;
}