5 ms·

I've just used alias c=clear in my .bashrc and never looked back. Not even Ctrl+L feels as convenient as c+Enter

adren123 7y ago
the full monty: alias c='echo -e "\033c" ; stty sane; setterm -reset; reset; tput reset; clear' doesn't only clear the screen, but also escape any "broken" terminal configuration such as output of a binary on the tty
- Fnoord 7y ago
  setterm does not work on macOS. I find reset(1) working fine. It already does clear, too.
  - JdeBP 7y ago
    One of these days, someone will take my portable setterm, which compiles fine on FreeBSD, and compile it on MacOS. (-: * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml
- JdeBP 7y ago
  One can spot cargo cult command-line use when two pairs of the commands overlap functionally, and another triplet is the same program by different names. Also note that RIS is a bad idea, discouraged since 1983 I recently discovered, although DEC did not think to tell people outside DEC this for half a decade. Use DECSTR.
bingerman 7y ago
I have mapped capslock to ctrl (esc if used without modifiers) which made ctrl+L extremely comfortable for me.
- dmitshur 7y ago
  I don’t quite understand why. With one hand or two?
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    Now you have Ctrl on home row, instead of two rows down.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      On a standard PC keyboard, I just use my palm to hit Ctrl (part of why I detest keyboards where Left Ctrl is not at the bottom left corner.
  - ascagnel_ 7y ago
    Some smaller keyboards (including laptops) make the control key small or add an "Fn" key to the bottom-left corner (Apple does this). I tend to hit Ctrl with my left hand, so mapping caps lock to Ctrl makes it more reliable to hit.
  - bingerman 7y ago
    Left pinky for ctrl (capslock) and right ring finger for L. Works incredibly well for my hands (a quality keyboard helps too). The capslock mapping is obviously meant for vim but works great for many shortcuts like this (ideally there would be a second ctrl/esc and other modifiers to operate with right pinky comfortably, starting my first custom build soon...).
- holtalanm 7y ago
  im reminded of this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png
kodachi 7y ago
> Ctrl+L feels as convenient as c+Enter I learned to hit Ctrl with my palms, and never looked back. Do you use your pinky? If so, I agree c+Enter is more convenient than ctrl+L.
- apocalyptic0n3 7y ago
  It never even occurred to me to do that but trying it now, I don't think it's feasible for my hands. Either my palm mashes CTRL, ALT, and CMD (and sometimes FN and Shift) or I have a super awkward angle to get to the C key. It seems much easier to just drop my pinky down for half a second. EDIT: After a suggestion from another user, I just remapped my Caps Lock to CTRL. That seems a lot easier to deal with. I'll try that for a bit and see how it goes.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  I use my left pinky to press Ctrl, and I use the right hand for L (index finger), so it makes no difference whether I press L or Enter using my right hand. I would probably use the right pinky for the Enter key. Works either way to me, but I am used to pressing Ctrl-L (left pinky for Ctrl, right index finger for L).
pletnes 7y ago
Ctrl+L works when a program is running. Clear does not.
- laumars 7y ago
  > Ctrl+L works when a program is running. Clear does not. I can't see how because ctrl+l is a $SHELL / readline shortcut rather than one defined in the terminal emulator. Once you run a program you're forking STDIN control to another process so you'd have to wait for the $SHELL / readline prompt again just like you would if you typed a command / function / alias into the command prompt.
  - lub 7y ago
    Is ctrl+c handled; by the terminal emulator? ctrl+l allows to clear when the prompt is non-empty, maybe parent poster meant that
    - laumars 7y ago
      I'm not 100% sure how ctrl+c (and ctrl+z) are handled but I do know they're edge cases because they're managed by the kernel and are not re-definable.
      - Pete_D 7y ago
        The terminal can optionally catch some characters and convert them to signals. By default, ^C sends SIGINT, ^\ sends SIGQUIT, and ^Z sends SIGTSTP. Programs can disable that for their own purposes (stty -isig) and you can rebind them to other characters if you want (stty intr, stty quit, stty susp) but I don't know why anyone would these days.
        hnlmorg 7y ago
        In Linux and UNIX you enable or disable use of ctrl+c (effectively setting the tty into a raw mode) via syscalls against the tty file descriptor - it is not handled by the terminal emulator at all (in fact if you read the man page for `stty` you'd see it's changing the your terminals fd and not the terminal emulator). Sure, theoretically terminal emulators could capture and even rebind those keys via the APIs of whatever graphical toolkit they're built in....but if you wanted to rebind SIGINT to another key in the terminal emulator, that terminal emulator would still have to transmit ^c to the tty. As for rebinding those keys in the kernel, Linux simply doesn't support doing that and nor does it support binding other keys to different signals. In fact I've tried to do this on a tool I was working on to emulate BSD's SIGINFO in Linux (turned out not to be possible) as as well part of the job control (SIGSTSP et al) support in my $SHELL (https://github.com/lmorg/murex https://github.com/lmorg/murex). This is also why you can throw signals over an SSH (or other remote shell) session when the terminal emulator itself would have no knowledge of the commands running on the remote host.

the full monty: alias c='echo -e "\033c" ; stty sane; setterm -reset; reset; tput reset; clear' doesn't only clear the screen, but also escape any "broken" terminal configuration such as output of a binary on the tty

Fnoord 7y ago
setterm does not work on macOS. I find reset(1) working fine. It already does clear, too.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  One of these days, someone will take my portable setterm, which compiles fine on FreeBSD, and compile it on MacOS. (-: * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/setterm.xml
JdeBP 7y ago
One can spot cargo cult command-line use when two pairs of the commands overlap functionally, and another triplet is the same program by different names. Also note that RIS is a bad idea, discouraged since 1983 I recently discovered, although DEC did not think to tell people outside DEC this for half a decade. Use DECSTR.

bingerman 7y ago

I have mapped capslock to ctrl (esc if used without modifiers) which made ctrl+L extremely comfortable for me.

dmitshur 7y ago
I don’t quite understand why. With one hand or two?
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  Now you have Ctrl on home row, instead of two rows down.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    On a standard PC keyboard, I just use my palm to hit Ctrl (part of why I detest keyboards where Left Ctrl is not at the bottom left corner.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  Some smaller keyboards (including laptops) make the control key small or add an "Fn" key to the bottom-left corner (Apple does this). I tend to hit Ctrl with my left hand, so mapping caps lock to Ctrl makes it more reliable to hit.
- bingerman 7y ago
  Left pinky for ctrl (capslock) and right ring finger for L. Works incredibly well for my hands (a quality keyboard helps too). The capslock mapping is obviously meant for vim but works great for many shortcuts like this (ideally there would be a second ctrl/esc and other modifiers to operate with right pinky comfortably, starting my first custom build soon...).
holtalanm 7y ago
im reminded of this: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png

kodachi 7y ago

> Ctrl+L feels as convenient as c+Enter I learned to hit Ctrl with my palms, and never looked back. Do you use your pinky? If so, I agree c+Enter is more convenient than ctrl+L.

apocalyptic0n3 7y ago
It never even occurred to me to do that but trying it now, I don't think it's feasible for my hands. Either my palm mashes CTRL, ALT, and CMD (and sometimes FN and Shift) or I have a super awkward angle to get to the C key. It seems much easier to just drop my pinky down for half a second. EDIT: After a suggestion from another user, I just remapped my Caps Lock to CTRL. That seems a lot easier to deal with. I'll try that for a bit and see how it goes.
johnisgood 7y ago
I use my left pinky to press Ctrl, and I use the right hand for L (index finger), so it makes no difference whether I press L or Enter using my right hand. I would probably use the right pinky for the Enter key. Works either way to me, but I am used to pressing Ctrl-L (left pinky for Ctrl, right index finger for L).

pletnes 7y ago

Ctrl+L works when a program is running. Clear does not.

laumars 7y ago
> Ctrl+L works when a program is running. Clear does not. I can't see how because ctrl+l is a $SHELL / readline shortcut rather than one defined in the terminal emulator. Once you run a program you're forking STDIN control to another process so you'd have to wait for the $SHELL / readline prompt again just like you would if you typed a command / function / alias into the command prompt.
- lub 7y ago
  Is ctrl+c handled; by the terminal emulator? ctrl+l allows to clear when the prompt is non-empty, maybe parent poster meant that
  - laumars 7y ago
    I'm not 100% sure how ctrl+c (and ctrl+z) are handled but I do know they're edge cases because they're managed by the kernel and are not re-definable.
    - Pete_D 7y ago
      The terminal can optionally catch some characters and convert them to signals. By default, ^C sends SIGINT, ^\ sends SIGQUIT, and ^Z sends SIGTSTP. Programs can disable that for their own purposes (stty -isig) and you can rebind them to other characters if you want (stty intr, stty quit, stty susp) but I don't know why anyone would these days.
      - hnlmorg 7y ago
        In Linux and UNIX you enable or disable use of ctrl+c (effectively setting the tty into a raw mode) via syscalls against the tty file descriptor - it is not handled by the terminal emulator at all (in fact if you read the man page for `stty` you'd see it's changing the your terminals fd and not the terminal emulator). Sure, theoretically terminal emulators could capture and even rebind those keys via the APIs of whatever graphical toolkit they're built in....but if you wanted to rebind SIGINT to another key in the terminal emulator, that terminal emulator would still have to transmit ^c to the tty. As for rebinding those keys in the kernel, Linux simply doesn't support doing that and nor does it support binding other keys to different signals. In fact I've tried to do this on a tool I was working on to emulate BSD's SIGINFO in Linux (turned out not to be possible) as as well part of the job control (SIGSTSP et al) support in my $SHELL (https://github.com/lmorg/murex https://github.com/lmorg/murex). This is also why you can throw signals over an SSH (or other remote shell) session when the terminal emulator itself would have no knowledge of the commands running on the remote host.