# clear 1 2025-04-05 ncurses 6.5 User commands

    clear(1)                         User commands                        clear(1)

## NAME

           clear - clear the terminal screen

## SYNOPSIS

           clear [-x] [-T terminal-type]

           clear -V

## DESCRIPTION

           clear  clears your terminal's screen and its scrollback buffer, if any.
           clear retrieves the terminal type from the environment  variable  TERM,
           then  consults the terminfo terminal capability database entry for that
           type to determine how to perform these actions.

           The capabilities to clear the screen and scrollback  buffer  are  named
           "clear"   and   "E3",  respectively.   The  latter  is  a  user-defined
           capability, applying an extension mechanism introduced in  ncurses  5.0
           (1999).

## OPTIONS

           clear recognizes the following options.

           -T type  produces   instructions   suitable   for  the  terminal  type.
                    Normally, this option is  unnecessary,  because  the  terminal
                    type  is inferred from the environment variable TERM.  If this
                    option is specified, clear ignores the  environment  variables
                    LINES and COLUMNS as well.

           -V       reports  the  version  of ncurses associated with this program
                    and exits with a successful status.

           -x       prevents clear from attempting to clear the scrollback buffer.

## PORTABILITY

           Neither IEEE Std 1003.1/The  Open  Group  Base  Specifications  Issue 7
           (POSIX.1-2008) nor X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents clear.

           The  latter documents tput, which could be used to replace this utility
           either via a shell script or by an alias (such as a symbolic  link)  to
           run tput as clear.

## HISTORY

           A clear command using the termcap database and library appeared in 2BSD
           (1979).  Eighth Edition Unix (1985) later included it.

           The commercial Unix arm of AT&T adapted a different BSD program  (tset)
           to  make  a  new  command,  tput, and replaced the clear program with a
           shell script that called "tput clear".

               /usr/bin/tput ${1:+-T$1} clear 2> /dev/null
               exit

           In 1989, when Keith Bostic revised the BSD  tput  command  to  make  it
           similar to AT&T's tput, he added a clear shell script as well.

               exec tput clear

           The remainder of the script in each case is a copyright notice.

           In 1995, ncurses's clear began by adapting BSD's original clear command
           to use terminfo.  The E3 extension came later.

           o   In June 1999, xterm provided an extension to the  standard  control
               sequence  for  clearing  the screen.  Rather than clearing just the
               visible part of the screen using

                   printf '\033[2J'

               one could clear the scrollback buffer as well by using

                   printf '\033[3J'

               instead.  "XTerm  Control  Sequences"  documents  this  feature  as
               originating with xterm.

           o   A few other terminal emulators adopted it, such as PuTTY in 2006.

           o   In  April  2011, a Red Hat developer submitted a patch to the Linux
               kernel,  modifying  its  console  driver  to  do  the  same  thing.
               Documentation  of  this  change,  appearing  in  Linux 3.0, did not
               mention xterm, although that program was cited in the Red  Hat  bug
               report (#683733) motivating the feature.

           o   Subsequently,  more  terminal  developers adopted the feature.  The
               next relevant step was to change the ncurses clear program in  2013
               to incorporate this extension.

           o   In 2013, the E3 capability was not exercised by "tput clear".  That
               oversight was addressed in 2016 by reorganizing tput to  share  its
               logic with clear and tset.

## SEE ALSO

           tput(1), xterm(1), terminfo(5)

    ncurses 6.5                       2025-04-05                          clear(1)