Clear terminal in Python

Question

Does any standard  comes with batteries  method exist to clear the terminal screen from a Python script  or do I have to go curses  the libraries  not the words

User · Answer

A Pure Python solution  Does not rely on either ANSI  or external commands  Only your terminal has to have the ability to tell you how many lines are in view   from shutil import get terminal size print   n    get terminal size   lines  end       Python version    3 3 0

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You could tear through the terminfo database  but the functions for doing so are in curses anyway

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By default  os system  clear   os system  cls   will return an int type as 0  We can completely clear the screen by assigning it to a variable and deleting that   def clear        if  os name     nt                c   os system  cls       else          c   os system  clear       del c    can also omit c totally   clear

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This function works in gnome-terminal because  by default  it recognizes ANSI escape sequences  It gives you a CLEAN PROMPT rows max distance from the bottom of the terminal  but also precisely from where it was called  Gives you complete control over how much to clear   def clear rows -1  rows max None     calling line True  absolute None            store max             clear rows -1  rows max None  clear 0  -1    Restore auto-determining rows max clear calling line False    Don t clear calling line clear absolute 5    Absolutely clear out to 5 rows up        from os import linesep     if rows max and rows max    -1          store max       rows max  False      elif not store max or store max 1  or rows max    -1 or absolute          try              from shutil import get terminal size             columns max  rows max   get terminal size           except ImportError              columns max  rows max   80  24         if absolute is None              store max       rows max  True      if store max          if rows    -1              rows   store max 0          elif isinstance rows  float               rows   round store max 0    rows          if rows  gt  store max 0  - 2              rows   store max 0  - 2     if absolute is None          s      033 1A          30 if calling line else       linesep   rows     else          s     033   A  format absolute   2    linesep         if absolute  gt  rows max - 2              absolute   rows max - 2         s           columns max   linesep    absolute         columns max         rows   absolute     print s     033   A  format rows   1     Implementation   clear     Clear all  TRIES to automatically get terminal height clear 800  24    Clear all  set 24 as terminal  max  height clear 12    Clear half of terminal below if 24 is its height clear 1000    Clear to terminal height - 2  24 - 2  clear 0 5    float factor 0 0 - 1 0 of terminal height  0 5   24   12  clear     Clear to rows max - 2 of user given rows max  24 - 2  clear 0  14    Clear line  reset rows max to half of 24  14-2  clear 0    Just clear the line clear 0  -1    Clear line  restore auto-determining rows max clear calling line False    Clear all  don t clear calling line clear absolute 5    Absolutely clear out to 5 rows up   Parameters  rows is the number of clear text rows to add between prompt and bottom of terminal  pushing everything up  rows max is the height of the terminal  or max clearing height  in text rows  and only needs to be set once  but can be reset at any time     in the third parameter position means all following parameters are keyword only  e g   clear absolute 5    calling line True  default  works better in Interactive mode  calling line False works better for text-based  terminal applications  absolute was added to try to fix glitchy gap problems in Interactive mode after reducing size of terminal  but can also be used for terminal applications  store max is just for secret   persistent  storage of rows max value  don t explicitly use this parameter   When an argument is not passed for store max  changing the list contents of store max changes this parameter s default value  Hence  persistent storage    Portability  Sorry  this doesn t work in IDLE  but it works    VERY COOL  lt  lt  in Interactive mode in a terminal  console  that recognizes ANSI escape sequences  I only tested this in Ubuntu 13 10 using Python 3 3 in gnome-terminal  So I can only assume portability is dependant upon Python 3 3  for the shutil get terminal size   function for BEST results  and ANSI recognition  The print      function is Python 3  I also tested this with a simple  text-based  terminal Tic Tac Toe game  application    For use in Interactive mode  First copy and paste the copy      function in Interactive mode and see if it works for you  If so  then put the above function into a file named clear py   In the terminal start python  with  python3   Enter    gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  sys path        usr lib python3 3         Now drop the clear py file into one of the path directories listed so that Python can find it  don t overwrite any existing files   To easily use from now on    gt  gt  gt  from clear import clear  gt  gt  gt  clear    gt  gt  gt  print clear   doc    clear rows -1  rows max None  clear 0  -1    Restore auto-determining rows max clear calling line False    Don t clear calling line clear absolute 5    Absolutely clear out to 5 rows up   For use in a terminal application  Put the copy      function into a file named clear py in the same folder with your main py file  Here is a working abstract  skeleton  example from a Tic Tac Toe game application  run from terminal prompt  python3 tictactoe py    from os import linesep  class TicTacToe          def   init   self             Clear screen  but not calling line         try              from clear import clear             self clear   clear             self clear calling line False          except ImportError              self clear   False         self rows   0      Track printed lines to clear                        self moves           9      def do print self   text  end linesep           text   list text          for i  v in enumerate text                  text i    str v          text       join text          print text  end end          self rows    text count linesep    1      def show board self           if self clear and self rows              self clear absolute self rows          self rows   0         self do print  Tic Tac Toe           self do print               6     7     8           -----------            3     4     5           -----------            0     1     2              format  self moves        def start self           self show board           ok   input  Press  lt Enter gt  to continue              self moves     O    X     4     O           self show board           ok   input  Press  lt Enter gt  to close     if   name         main         TicTacToe   start     Explanation  do print      on line 19 is a version of print      needed to keep track of how many new lines have been printed  self rows   Otherwise  you would have to self rows    1 all over the place where print      is called throughout the entire program  So each time the board is redrawn by calling show board   the previous board is cleared out and the new board is printed exactly where it should be  Notice self clear calling line False  on line 9 basically pushes everything up RELATIVE to the bottom of the terminal  but does not clear the original calling line  In contrast  self clear absolute self rows  on line 29 absolutely clears out everything self rows distance upward  rather than just pushing everything upward relative to the bottom of the terminal   Ubuntu users with Python 3 3  Put    usr bin env python3 on the very first line of the tictactoe py file  Right click on the tictactoe py file    Properties    Permissions tab    Check Execute  Allow executing file as program  Double click on the file    Click Run in Terminal button  If an open terminal s current directory is that of the tictactoe py file  you can also start the file with   tictactoe py

User · Answer

This will clear 25  new lines   def clear        print    n    25   clear     I use eclipse with pydev  I like the newline solution better than the for num in range   The for loop throws warnings  while the print newline doesn t  If you want to specify the number of newlines in the clear statement try this variation   def clear j       print    n    j   clear 25

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If all you need is to clear the screen  this is probably good enough  The problem is there s not even a 100  cross platform way of doing this across linux versions  The problem is the implementations of the terminal all support slightly different things  I m fairly sure that  clear  will work everywhere  But the more  complete  answer is to use the xterm control characters to move the cursor  but that requires xterm in and of itself   Without knowing more of your problem  your solution seems good enough

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So just thought I would throw my two cents in here     No one has provided a true answer to OP question it seems  everyone either responds with  NO DONT USE os system   it s evil     without explanation or provides a solution that relies on printing new lines   For those that need to clear the terminal screen and scroll back  for whatever reason  you can use the following code   import os  def clear                Clears the terminal screen and scroll back to present     the user with a nice clean  new screen  Useful for managing     menu screens in terminal applications              os system  cls  if os name     nt  else  echo -e     033c    print  A bunch of garbage so we can garble up the screen      clear      Same effect  less characters     def clear                Clears the terminal screen and scroll back to present     the user with a nice clean  new screen  Useful for managing     menu screens in terminal applications              os system  cls  echo -e     033c     This has the OP s desired effect  It does use the os system   command so if that s evil and someone knows a way of implementing this using subprocess call   please comment as I would also prefer to use subprocess but am not familiar with it at all

User · Answer

In Windows you can use    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  clear   lambda  os system  cls    gt  gt  gt  clear

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If you wish to clear your terminal when you are using a python shell  Then  you can do the following to clear the screen  import os os system  clear

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A perhaps cheesy way to clear the screen  but one that will work on any platform I know of  is as follows   for i in xrange 0 100       print

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Why hasn t anyone talked about just simply doing Ctrl L in Windows or  Cmd L in Mac  Surely the  simplest way of clearing screen

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I would do it in this way to make it look more like bash   Just create a file named  pythonstartup at Home directory and use poke s answer in a function  On Linux   echo  from subprocess import call def clear int None         call  clear       if int    0         exit   clear     gt  gt   HOME  pythonstartup   export PYTHONSTARTUP  HOME  pythonstartup   python   You can add export PYTHONSTARTUP  HOME  pythonstartup to your   bashrc file  Since what I care about is space  a call to the function will not display the python interpreter description at startup  but you can remove clear   to retain it   Using it like a normal function should do the trick without printing the exit status    gt  gt  gt  clear     If you pass the argument 0 to the function it will clear the screen and exit successfully so you can continue using the shell in a clean screen   gt  gt  gt  clear 0

User · Answer

If you are on a Linux UNIX system then printing the ANSI escape sequence to clear the screen should do the job   You will also want to move cursor to the top of the screen   This will work on any terminal that supports ANSI   import sys sys stderr write   x1b 2J x1b H     This will not work on Windows unless ANSI support has been enabled   There may be an equivalent control sequence for Windows  but I do not know

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This will be work in Both version Python2 OR Python3  print  u    2J    H  format chr 27   chr 27

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As for me  the most elegant variant   import os os system  cls  clear

User · Answer

A simple and cross-platform solution would be to use either the cls command on Windows  or clear on Unix systems  Used with os system  this makes a nice one-liner   import os os system  cls  if os name     nt  else  clear

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python -c  from os import system  system  clear

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You can use call   function to execute terminal s commands    from subprocess import call call  clear

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you can make your own  this will not be dependent on your terminal  or OS type   def clear num       for i in range num   print   clear 80  print  hello

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Just use   print   033c     This will clear the terminal window

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This works on all platforms and it does work in both Python 2 and 3   def clear number       for i in range number           print        Then to clear just type clear numberhere

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For Windows  on the interpreter command line only  not the GUI   Simply type   Remember to use proper indentation with python     import os def clear        os system  cls     Every time you type clear   on the shell  command line   it will clear the screen on your shell  If you exit the shell  then you must redo the above to do it again as you open a new Python  command line  shell   Note  Does not matter what version of Python you are using  explicitly  2 5  2 7  3 3  amp  3 4

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Came across this some time ago  def clearscreen numlines 100        Clear the console  numlines is an optional argument used only as a fall-back        Thanks to Steven D Aprano  http   www velocityreviews com forums    if os name     posix         Unix Linux MacOS BSD etc     os system  clear     elif os name in   nt    dos    ce          DOS Windows     os system  CLS     else        Fallback for other operating systems      print   n    numlines    Then just use clearscreen

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For Windows  Mac and Linux  you can use the following code   import subprocess  platform  if platform system     Windows       subprocess Popen  cls   shell True  communicate    I like to use this instead of subprocess call since for multi-word commands you can just type it out  granted this is just cls and subprocess call should work fine  else   Linux and Mac     print   033c   end       jamesnotjim tested print   033c   end     for Mac  and I tested it on Linux and Windows  it doesn t work for Windows  hence the other code that calls cls   I don t remember who it was I first saw use print   033c   and or the printf version  subprocess Popen  printf   033c    shell True  communicate     rolika pointed out that end    will prevent it from printing a new line afterward

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What about escape sequences   print chr 27      2J

User · Answer

The accepted answer is a good solution   The problem with it is that so far it only works on Windows 10  Linux and Mac   Yes Windows  known for it lack of ANSI support    This new feature was implemented on Windows 10  and above  which includes ANSI support  although you have to enable it   This will clear the screen in a cross platform manner   import os  print   Hello World   os system      print    x1B 2J     On anything below Windows 10 however it returns this    2J   This is due to the lack of ANSI support on previous Windows builds   This can however  be solved using the colorama module   This adds support for ANSI characters on Windows      ANSI escape character sequences have long been used to produce colored terminal text and cursor positioning on Unix and Macs  Colorama makes this work on Windows  too  by wrapping stdout  stripping ANSI sequences it finds  which would appear as gobbledygook in the output   and converting them into the appropriate win32 calls to modify the state of the terminal  On other platforms  Colorama does nothing    So here is a cross platform method   import sys  if sys platform     win32       from colorama import init     init    print  Hello World    print   x1B 2J     Or print chr 27      2J   used instead of print   x1B 2J        poke answer is very insecure on Windows  yes it works but it is really a hack   A file named cls bat or cls exe in the same dictionary as the script will conflict with the command and execute the file instead of the command  creating a huge security hazard   One method to minimise the risk could be to change the location of where the cls command is called   import os os system  cd C   Windows cls  if os name     nt  else  clear     This will change the Currant Dictionary to C  Window  backslash is important here  then execute   C  Windows is always present and needs administration permissions to write there making it a good for executing this command with minimal risk   Another solution is to run the command through PowerShell instead of Command Prompt since it has been secured against such vulnerabilities    There are also other methods mentioned in this question  Clear screen in shell which may also be of use

User · Answer

You could try to rely on clear but it might not be available on all Linux distributions  On windows use cls as you mentionned   import subprocess import platform  def clear        subprocess Popen   cls  if platform system       Windows  else  clear   shell True   clear     Note  It could be considered bad form to take control of the terminal screen   Are you considering using an option  It would probably be better to let the user decide if he want to clear the screen

[python] Clear terminal in Python

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