Clear Terminal in Python

Clear terminal in Python

What about escape sequences?

print(chr(27) + "[2J")

How to clear the interpreter console?

As you mentioned, you can do a system call:

For Windows:

>>> import os
>>> clear = lambda: os.system('cls')
>>> clear()

For Linux it would be:

>>> import os
>>> clear = lambda: os.system('clear')
>>> clear()

Clear screen in shell

For macOS/OS X, you can use the subprocess module and call 'cls' from the shell:

import subprocess as sp
sp.call('cls', shell=True)

To prevent '0' from showing on top of the window, replace the 2nd line with:

tmp = sp.call('cls', shell=True)

For Linux, you must replace cls command with clear

tmp = sp.call('clear', shell=True)

Is there a python 3 command to clear the output console?

On the command prompt (not PyCharm console), try the colorama library to move the cursor back up and print the next iteration over the current iteration (colorama makes ANSI control codes compatible with Windows):

(colorama can be installed via pip install colorama)

import copy
import random
import time

import colorama
colorama.init()

WIDTH = 60
HEIGHT = 10

nextCells = []
for x in range(WIDTH):
    column = []
    for y in range(HEIGHT):
        if random.randint(0, 1) == 0:
            column.append('#')
        else:
            column.append(' ')
    nextCells.append(column)

while True:
    #print('\n\n\n\n')
    currentCells = copy.deepcopy(nextCells)

    for y in range(HEIGHT):
        for x in range(WIDTH):
            print(currentCells[x][y], end='')
        print()
    for x in range(WIDTH):
        for y in range(HEIGHT):
            leftCoord = (x - 1) % WIDTH
            rightCoord = (x + 1) % WIDTH
            aboveCoord = (y - 1) % HEIGHT
            belowCoord = (y + 1) % HEIGHT

            numNeighbors = 0
            if currentCells[leftCoord][aboveCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[x][aboveCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[rightCoord][aboveCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[leftCoord][y] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[rightCoord][y] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[leftCoord][belowCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[x][belowCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1
            if currentCells[rightCoord][belowCoord] == '#':
                numNeighbors += 1

            if currentCells[x][y] == '#' and (numNeighbors == 2 or numNeighbors == 3):
                nextCells[x][y] = '#'
            elif currentCells[x][y] == ' ' and numNeighbors == 3:
                nextCells[x][y] = '#'
            else:
                nextCells[x][y] = ' '

    # Here we move the cursor back up:
    print(f'\033[{HEIGHT+1}A')

    time.sleep(1)

How do i automatically clear the terminal in VSCode before execution of script?

Building on @Jacques answer, you can use the sys module to dynamically perform a platform check:

import os
import sys

# Linux
if sys.platform.startswith('linux'):
    os.system('clear')
# Windows
elif sys.platform.startswith('win32'):
    os.system('cls')

Alternatively, see this post on configuring vscode to do this for all programs: How do I automatically clear VS Code terminal when starting a build?

clear terminal (and history!) in Python

You could use subprocess.call() from the standard library subprocess module to send the reset command to the terminal which will reinitialize the terminal and in effect do something similar to clear but also clear the scrollback history.

import subprocess
subprocess.call('reset')

Alternatively, I have learned from this answer, that you can use the command tput reset instead, which will clear the terminal instantly, whereas with reset alone you will experience a slight delay. This can also be called with subprocess.call() as follows:

subprocess.call(['tput', 'reset'])

For more info on the reset command, do:

$ man reset

For more info on the subprocess module, see the documentation.

I have tested both of these on Ubuntu, but hopefully the will work on OSX/macOS as well. If not, perhaps you can use subprocess combined with this solution, but I am unable to test that.

Python - Clearing the terminal screen more elegantly

print "\033c"

works on my system.

You could also cache the clear-screen escape sequence produced by clear command:

import subprocess
clear_screen_seq = subprocess.check_output('clear')

then

print clear_screen_seq

any time you want to clear the screen.

tput clear command that produces the same sequence is defined in POSIX.

You could use curses, to get the sequence:

import curses
import sys

clear_screen_seq = b''
if sys.stdout.isatty():
    curses.setupterm()
    clear_screen_seq = curses.tigetstr('clear')

The advantage is that you don't need to call curses.initscr() that is required to get a window object which has .erase(), .clear() methods.

To use the same source on both Python 2 and 3, you could use os.write() function:

import os
os.write(sys.stdout.fileno(), clear_screen_seq)

clear command on my system also tries to clear the scrollback buffer using tigetstr("E3").

Here's a complete Python port of the clear.c command:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Clear screen in the terminal."""
import curses
import os
import sys

curses.setupterm()
e3 = curses.tigetstr('E3') or b''
clear_screen_seq = curses.tigetstr('clear') or b''
os.write(sys.stdout.fileno(), e3 + clear_screen_seq)

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