How to Clear the Interpreter Console

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()

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 to clear python interpreter screen

>>> import os
>>> os.system("cls")

Should work on windows.

If you are using Linux, you might use clear instead of cls.

Clear terminal in Python

What about escape sequences?

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

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)

Clear python console command history

Assuming you want to clear the command history Python goes through when you hit the up and down arrow keys, that history is managed by either the GNU readline library or libedit, depending on your system. The Python readline module is the Python-level interface to the underlying library (even if that library is libedit), and on systems where the underlying library supports it, you can clear the history with readline.clear_history:

>>> import readline
>>> readline.clear_history()

I do not know if the library on your Mac supports it.