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I am used to command + k to clear up the terminal in mac. It is very helpful specially while debugging through server logs. What is the equivalent in Ubuntu system ?

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FYI - apparently this is called "clear scrollback" or "clearing the scrollback buffer" and is a function of the terminal program (not the shell, such as bash or zsh). – Nathan Long Jan 18 '12 at 13:53

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 12 '11 at 18:45

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Clearing the screen

This will work for both Mac OS X and *nix:

Ctrl-l

My answer assumes the default terminal emulators for bash, tcsh (default for Mac OS X) or zsh.

Deleting the scrollback buffer (more like ⌘K)

This has been asked/answered elsewhere.

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can you post please your Terminal.app preferences, and/or something to show HOW you enabled CTRL-L for the clear in the OS X Terminal.app? (Because in my Mac CTRL-L does not works). – jm666 Jul 12 '11 at 18:31
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It's a bash, tcsh and zsh supported short-cut. It's got nothing to do with Terminal.app – opyate Jul 12 '11 at 18:36
Strange, because it's does not clear for me. I'm using bash --version: GNU bash, version 4.2.0(1)-release (i386-apple-darwin10.7.0) – jm666 Jul 12 '11 at 18:43
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Just found the problem source. You must have "set -o emacs" for CTRL-L, (what is default), but i'm using vi-mode. :) – jm666 Jul 12 '11 at 18:50
What if you go into Terminal -> Preferences -> Settings -> Keyboard and tick "Use option as meta key"? – opyate Jul 12 '11 at 18:51
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up vote 1 down vote

^L - the equivalent to 'clear' command

I guess this is what you were searching for

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I was searching for a shortcut for clearing up the screen so that whatever comes next will be visible clearly because I don't want to see the previous texts. I use command+K in mac , i set shortcut for clear and reset in ubuntu , that sortof worked for me though. – Prabesh Shrestha Jul 14 '11 at 2:00
up vote 0 down vote

This is not a key chord, but if you want to clear your terminal and recover it if it gets hosed, you can use the 'reset' command. I know this works in linux and BSD, not sure about OSX.

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reset works in OSX as well . – Prabesh Shrestha Jan 18 '12 at 14:27

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