On 2020-12-27 at 13:24:34 +1100, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
But the ctrl-L trick has no discoverability. It took me close to twenty years of using Linux before I discovered it, and I still don't remember to use it when I need it.
The first time a sysadmin added readline to one of our work computers, it took me *minutes* to be stunned that my terminal window was being cleared for no reason. It took me longer to discover that the reason was accidental Ctrl-L's (no doubt an off-by-one error trying to press Ctrl-K), and way longer to figure out what piece of [software] was intercepting that keystroke and clearning my screen. The very first line in my .inputrc file is as follows: Control-L: redraw-current-line
Beginners and casual users aren't going to know ctrl-L, or stumble across it through experimentation. People like me aren't going to remember to use it. For interactive use, os.clear is barely any better.
Technically, I was a professional, and I stumbled on it through fat fingers and not knowing that readline had been installed and did horrible things like that out of the box. And then I disabled it as quickly as I could figure out how. Call me 0 (because I don't care enough to be +0 or -0) on the whole thing, as long as it's spelled with more than one keystroke (to prevent accidental invocation).