I agree with Guido here.  Although I really don't care about the capability
myself, it feels like enough people do want a "clear screen" function...
and from the discussion, in feels like there are a LOT of variations in how
to do it across different operating systems, OS versions, terminals,
shells, etc.

Having a common interface of `os.clear()` that did whatever funny thing a
particular environment needed would save some folks trouble.  Of course,
I'm not certain how far it is possible to auto-detect the environment
details within that function to "do the right thing" ... but probably there
are clever hacks that get to 90% working.

On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 1:03 PM Rob Cliffe via Python-ideas <
python-ideas@python.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 16/10/2020 13:55, Chris Angelico wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 11:08 PM Rob Cliffe <rob.cli...@btinternet.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 16/10/2020 11:59, Chris Angelico wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 8:21 PM Rob Cliffe via Python-ideas
> >>> <python-ideas@python.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On 13/10/2020 23:35, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >>>>> Can one of the educators on the list explain why this is such a
> >>>>> commonly required feature? I literally never feel the need to clear
> my
> >>>>> screen -- but I've seen this requested quite a few times in various
> >>>>> forms, often as a bug report "IDLE does not support CLS". I presume
> >>>>> that this is a common thing in other programming environments for
> >>>>> beginners -- even C++ (given that it was mentioned). Maybe it's a
> >>>>> thing that command-line users on Windows are told to do frequently?
> >>>>> What am I missing that students want to do frequently? Is it a
> >>>>> holdover from the DOS age?
> >>>>>
> >>>> Sometimes I want a program that displays (more than 1 line of)
> real-time
> >>>> information in a Windows CMD box and refreshes it every few seconds
> >>>> (e.g. progress displays, monitoring open
> >>>> files/locks/connections/downloads etc.).  It is natural to clear the
> >>>> screen and display the updated information.
> >>> Natural perhaps, but ugly. Much better to reposition the cursor and
> >>> overwrite the previous text, with "clear to end of line" as required;
> >>> that way, you avoid flicker.
> >>>
> >>> C
> >> I do precisely that in many of my programs for e.g. single-line progress
> >> displays.
> >> But for multi-line output I don't know of any way to move the cursor
> >> back up.
> >> I work in Windows 10.
> > Try \x1b[A to move up a line, should work.
> >
> > ChrisA
> Thanks Chris, but no luck.  It just echoes it, with the \x1b (Escape)
> echoed as a character that looks like a question mark inside a box.
> Earlier I did try googling for ways of moving the cursor, but almost all
> I found was ways of moving the *mouse* cursor, and the rest was irrelevant.
> Rob Cliffe
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not-yet born.  Vampiric capital and undead corporate persons abuse
the lives and control the thoughts of homo faber. Ideas, once born,
become abortifacients against new conceptions.
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