On Sat, Oct 17, 2020 at 5:40 AM Jonathan Crall <erotemic@gmail.com> wrote:
I just want to point out that I can think of a valid use case for `clf`. I'm not sure if it was mentioned.
In the case where you have a script that produces a lot of output, a common task might be scrolling to the beginning to check an output. If your screen was not fresh, and you had a lot of previous output (say from running the script multiple times), then it is hard to find the beginning unless you have previously cleared the screen.
This is exactly why I think this should NOT be made too easy. That's a perfect example of an attractive nuisance: instead of creating a divider (say, a half a dozen blank lines, or a row of hyphens with a blank or two each side), you're throwing away all information from the previous output, making it impossible to compare the two. Once your script has a clear-screen at the start of it, you lose the option to examine history, whereas a simple few blank lines would have a similar effect without losing anything. If it is added to the stdlib, I hope that it's buried away where people find it only if they're actually looking for it. There ARE valid use-cases, but there are far far more cases where it shouldn't be used. ChrisA