Zsh clear scrollback buffer

Question

With Bash CtrlL will clear the screen but not scrollback buffer. In the past I have worked around this by using:

tput reset

However I have noticed that this command will not clear the scrollback buffer with Zsh. So, how is it done?

Solution

function clear-scrollback-buffer {
  # Behavior of clear: 
  # 1. clear scrollback if E3 cap is supported (terminal, platform specific)
  # 2. then clear visible screen
  # For some terminal 'e[3J' need to be sent explicitly to clear scrollback
  clear && printf '\e[3J'
  # .reset-prompt: bypass the zsh-syntax-highlighting wrapper
  # https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto/issues/1026
  # https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions/issues/107#issuecomment-183824034
  # -R: redisplay the prompt to avoid old prompts being eaten up
  # https://github.com/Powerlevel9k/powerlevel9k/pull/1176#discussion_r299303453
  zle && zle .reset-prompt && zle -R
}
zle -N clear-scrollback-buffer
bindkey '^L' clear-scrollback-buffer

clear and zle .reset-prompt && zle -R are added to make sure it works for multiline prompts, which is important.

References

• What does clear do
• Clearing the buffer without clearing the status line

Comments

[Marius]

That's for iterm2, while OP is asking about VTE (the two do not behave the same).

[Simba]

@ThomasDickey Yes, you're right. The sequence code is for xterm, not VTE. I missed it.

[Kamil.S]

You can achieve the same in one step printf "\ec\e[3J"