How to clear the interpreter console

Question

Like most Python developers  I typically keep a console window open with the Python interpreter running to test commands  dir   stuff  help   stuff  etc   Like any console  after a while the visible backlog of past commands and prints gets to be cluttered  and sometimes confusing when re-running the same command several times   I m wondering if  and how  to clear the Python interpreter console   I ve heard about doing a system call and either calling cls on Windows or clear on Linux  but I was hoping there was something I could command the interpreter itself to do   Note  I m running on Windows  so Ctrl L doesn t work

User · Answer

I m not sure if Windows   shell  supports this  but on Linux   print   033 2J   https   en wikipedia org wiki ANSI escape code CSI codes  In my opinion calling cls with os is a bad idea generally  Imagine if I manage to change the cls or clear command on your system  and you run your script as admin or root

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OK  so this is a much less technical answer  but I m using the Python plugin for Notepad   and it turns out you can just clear the console manually by right-clicking on it and clicking  clear   Hope this helps someone out there

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This is the simplest thing you can do and it doesn t require any additional libraries  It will clear the screen and return  gt  gt  gt  to the top left corner   print   033 H 033 J

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Well  here s a quick hack    gt  gt  gt  clear     n    100  gt  gt  gt  print clear  gt  gt  gt     do some other stuff     gt  gt  gt  print clear   Or to save some typing  put this file in your python search path     wiper py class Wipe object       def   repr   self           return   n  1000  wipe   Wipe     Then you can do this from the interpreter all you like      gt  gt  gt  from wiper import wipe  gt  gt  gt  wipe  gt  gt  gt  wipe  gt  gt  gt  wipe

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Wiper is cool  good thing about it is I don t have to type      around it  Here is slight variation to it    wiper py import os class Cls object       def   repr   self               os system  cls           return      The usage is quite simple    gt  gt  gt  cls   Cls    gt  gt  gt  cls   this will clear console

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As you mentioned  you can do a system call  For Windows   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  clear   lambda  os system  cls    gt  gt  gt  clear    For Linux it would be   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  clear   lambda  os system  clear    gt  gt  gt  clear

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I use iTerm and the native terminal app for Mac OS   I just press     k

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Just enter  import os os system  cls     Windows os system  clear     Linux  Unix  Mac OS X

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I found the simplest way is just to close the window and run a module script to reopen the shell

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The OS command clear in Linux and cls in Windows outputs a  magic string  which you can just print   To get the string  execute the command with popen and save it in a variable for later use   from os import popen with popen  clear   as f      clear   f read    print clear   On my machine the string is   x1b H x1b 2J

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gt  gt  gt      80 25   UPDATE  80x25 is unlikely to be the size of console windows  so to get the real console dimensions  use functions from pager module  Python doesn t provide anything similar from core distribution    gt  gt  gt  from pager import getheight  gt  gt  gt    n    getheight

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I m new to python  really really new  and in one of the books I m reading to get acquainted with the language they teach how to create this little function to clear the console of the visible backlog and past commands and prints   Open shell   Create new document   Create function as follows   def clear        print   n    50    Save it inside the lib folder in you python directory  mine is C  Python33 Lib  Next time you nedd to clear your console just call the function with   clear     that s it  PS  you can name you function anyway you want  Iv  seen people using  wiper   wipe  and variations

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This is a pretty easy trick using a package named OS  if you want clear as a function       Keyboard Shortcut   cmd ctrl   k       Python Code Editor    from the package OS  import  system  and name   from os import system  name   create a function called clear    You can name this anything you want  def clear      the method is different depending on what computer you are using      if name     nt             if windows  linux             system  cls        else           mac  etc              system  clear      we use       system  clear     as the function system returns a number in this case  0

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The easiest way is to use os module   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  clear   lambda  os system  clear    gt  gt  gt  clear

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I am using Spyder  Python 2 7  and to clean the interpreter console I use either    clear    that forces the command line to go to the top and I will not see the previous old commands   or I click  option  on the Console environment and select  Restart kernel  that removes everything

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This should be cross platform  and also uses the preferred subprocess call instead of os system as per the os system docs  Should work in Python    2 4   import subprocess import os  if os name     nt       def clearscreen            subprocess call  cls   shell True          return else      def clearscreen            subprocess call  clear   shell True          return

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You have number of ways doing it on Windows   1  Using Keyboard shortcut   Press CTRL   L   2  Using system invoke method   import os cls   lambda  os system  cls   cls     3  Using new line print 100 times   cls   lambda  print   n  100  cls

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Arch Linux  tested in xfce4-terminal with Python 3      Clear or wipe console  terminal     Use  clear   or wipe    import os  def clear        os system  clear    def wipe        os system  clear  amp  amp  printf   e 3J          added to    pythonrc   clear   clears screen wipe   wipes entire terminal buffer

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Here s the definitive solution that merges all other answers  Features    You can copy-paste the code into your shell or script  You can use it as you like    gt  gt  gt  clear    gt  gt  gt  -clear  gt  gt  gt  clear     lt - but this will only work on a shell  You can import it as a module    gt  gt  gt  from clear import clear  gt  gt  gt  -clear  You can call it as a script     python clear py  It is truly multiplatform  if it can t recognize your system  ce  nt  dos or posix  it will fall back to printing blank lines      You can download the  full  file here  https   gist github com 3130325 Or if you are just looking for the code   class clear   def   call   self     import os   if os name    ce   nt   dos    os system  cls     elif os name   posix   os system  clear     else  print   n  120   def   neg   self   self    def   repr   self     self   return     clear clear

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Here are two nice ways of doing that   1    import os    Clear Windows command prompt  if  os name in   ce    nt    dos         os system  cls      Clear the Linux terminal  elif   posix  in os name       os system  clear     2   import os  def clear        if os name     posix           os system  clear        elif os name in   ce    nt    dos            os system  cls     clear

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here something handy that is a little more cross-platform  import os  def cls        os system  cls  if os name   nt  else  clear      now  to clear the screen cls

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Use idle  It has many handy features   Ctrl F6  for example  resets the console   Closing and opening the console are good ways to clear it

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for the mac user inside the python console type  import os os system  clear     for windows  os system  cls

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just use this    print   n  1000

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EDIT  I ve just read  windows   this is for linux users  sorry     In bash      bin bash  while    0      0     do     clear            while     input           do         read -p  Do you want to quit   y n     -n 1 -e input         if     input      y     then             exit 1         elif     input      n     then             echo  Ok  keep working             fi     done     input    done   Save it as  whatyouwant sh   chmod  x it then run     whatyouwant sh python   or something other than python  idle  whatever   This will ask you if you actually want to exit  if not it rerun python  or the command you gave as parameter    This will clear all  the screen and all the variables object anything you created imported in python    In python just type exit   when you want to exit

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Here s a cross platform  Windows   Linux   Mac   Probably others that you can add in the if check  version snippet I made combining information found in this question   import os clear   lambda  os system  cls  if os name   nt  else  clear   clear     Same idea but with a spoon of syntactic sugar   import subprocess    clear   lambda  subprocess call  cls  clear   shell True  clear

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Although this is an older question  I thought I d contribute something summing up what I think were the best of the other answers and add a wrinkle of my own by suggesting that you put these command s  into a file and set your PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable to point to it  Since I m on Windows at the moment  it s slightly biased that way  but could easily be slanted some other direction   Here s some articles I found that describe how to set environment variables on Windows       nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp When to use sys path append and when modifying  PYTHONPATH  is enough      nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp How To Manage Environment Variables in Windows XP      nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp Configuring System and User Environment Variables      nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp How to Use Global System Environment Variables in Windows  BTW  don t put quotes around the path to the file even if it has spaces in it   Anyway  here s my take on the code to put in  or add to your existing  Python startup script          pythonstartup py         add something to clear the screen class cls object       def   repr   self           import os         os system  cls  if os name     nt  else  clear           return     cls   cls           end pythonstartup py        BTW  you can also use  Triptych s   repr   trick to change exit   into just exit  and ditto for its alias quit    class exit object       exit   exit   original object     def   repr   self           self exit     call original         return     quit   exit   exit     Lastly  here s something else that changes the primary interpreter prompt from  gt  gt  gt  to cwd  gt  gt  gt    class Prompt      def   str   self           import os         return   s  gt  gt  gt      os getcwd    import sys sys ps1   Prompt   del sys del Prompt

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How about this for a clear  - os system  cls     That is about as short as could be

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A simple one liner will be     for windows name is nt  clear   lambda   os system  cls  if os name   nt  else  clear    clear

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If you don t need to do it through code  just press CTRL L

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my way of doing this is to write a function like so   import os import subprocess  def clear        if os name in   nt   dos            subprocess call  cls       elif os name in   linux   osx   posix            subprocess call  clear       else          print   n     120   then call clear   to clear the screen  this works on windows  osx  linux  bsd    all OSes

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I might be late to the part but here is a very easy way to do it  Type   def cls        os system  cls     So what ever you want to clear the screen just type in your code  cls     Best way possible   Credit   https   www youtube com watch annotation id annotation 3770292585 amp feature iv amp src vid bguKhMnvmb8 amp v LtGEp9c6Z-U

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If it is on mac  then a simple cmd   k should do the trick

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I m using MINGW BASH on Windows XP  SP3    stick this in  pythonstartup     My ctrl-l already kind of worked  but this might help someone else    leaves prompt at bottom of the window though    import readline readline parse and bind   C-l  clear-screen        This works in BASH because I have it in  inputrc as well  but for some    reason it gets dropped when I go into Python readline parse and bind   C-y  kill-whole-line        I couldn t stand typing  exit    anymore and was delighted with martineau s Triptych s tricks   I slightly doctored it though  stuck it in  pythonstartup     class exxxit           Shortcut for exit   function  use  x  now        quit now   exit   original object     def   repr   self           self quit now     call original x   exxxit       Py2 7 1 gt help x  Help on instance of exxxit in module   main     class exxxit     Shortcut for exit   function  use  x  now        Methods defined here           repr   self         ----------------------------------------------------------------------     Data and other attributes defined here         quit now   Use exit   or Ctrl-Z plus Return to exit

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Quickest and easiest way without a doubt is Ctrl L   This is the same for OS X on the terminal

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The perfect cls  cls   lambda  print  quot  033c 033 3J quot   end     cls    Or directly  print  quot  033c 033 3J quot   end

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Magic strings are mentioned above - I believe they come from the terminfo database   http   www google com  q x q terminfo  http   www google com  q x q tput command in unix    tput clear  od -t x1z 0000000 1b 5b 48 1b 5b 32 4a                                H  2J lt  0000007

[python] How to clear the interpreter console?

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