How to let shell return to the previous line after exiting a full-screen process like Vim

Question

I connect to Z-Shell on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 machine via Putty. After I exit a full-screen process, eg Vim and less, in Unix shell, the shell prompt starts at the last line of the screen. The screen above still shows the context of that process, so I lost all stuff that shell showed before I opened that process.

This doesn't happen in my own Ubuntu box, where after exiting a process, I get back to the line below the last command I typed.

What options can I change(maybe in zshrc?) to make it behave like my Ubuntu box?

Answer 1

I've seen this problem too. Check your PuTTY settings under Terminal->Features. If "Disable switching to alternate terminal screen" is checked, uncheck it. (All my settings on that page are unchecked.) The help for that option looks promising.

Failing that, this page I found by googling might give you some ideas. You might be able to set some terminfo stuff to get it working right.

Answer 2

I figured it out! All I have to do is set $TERM to xterm. It used to be linux

export TERM=xterm 

Thanks for the link and hints, David!