How do I get the 'clear' command in Cygwin?

199
votes

I installed Cygwin, choosing a fairly minimal set of packages.

In a terminal, I tried to do 'clear' to clear the terminal, but I get

bash: clear: command not found

How do I get this to work?

10
cygwinncurses
You can also type control-L. – Keith Thompson
Yes, but (for me) that does not work in set -o vi mode; it does work in set -o emacs mode though. Thanks. – MarnixKlooster ReinstateMonica
In set -o vi mode, you can type escape followed by control-L (then i to get back to insert mode). (Personally, I like vi as an editor, but not as an interactive shell mode.) – Keith Thompson
press ctrl+L to clear – KOTIOS
Note that the ncurses package (as stated in the accepted answer) also includes other useful terminal-related commands such as tput, so it may be worth installing depending on your needs. – Donald Burr

10 Answers

243
votes

Install the Cygwin package ncurses; it is in the Utils category.

126
votes

This should do:

alias clear='printf "\033c"'
35
votes

just use this shortcut: Alt+F8 and Ctrl-L to skip page

14
votes

Use cygcheck command to check what package it is in (adding .exe to your cmd string, in this example: clear.exe)

> cygcheck -p 'clear.exe'
Found 4 matches for clear.exe
ncurses-debuginfo-5.9-20150307-1 - ncurses-debuginfo: Debug info for ncurses (installed binaries and support files)
ncurses-debuginfo-5.9-20150404-1 - ncurses-debuginfo: Debug info for ncurses (installed binaries and support files)
ncurses-5.9-20150307-1 - ncurses: Terminal display utilities (installed binaries and support files)
ncurses-5.9-20150404-1 - ncurses: Terminal display utilities (installed binaries and support files)

and you know you have to install ncurses package using cygwin installer.

13
votes

It's nice to have the clear.exe program for bash script files, so:

Windows Cygwin detail for clear.exe program command.

  1. Download Cygwin setupx86.exe or whatever it's call at http://cygwin.com/

  2. Run it and download from internet. *If you have a proxy connection, you may need to use Internet Explorer settings or set up custom proxy.

  3. Choose all default settings, and finish the installation.

  4. Run the installer a second time and again download from internet, but this time you will go into Utils, when it comes to the tree of files to customize your installation.

  5. Expand Utils and get down to the ncurses" files. There, you will click on the skip item, to the left of the ncurses utils (there are a few).

  6. After changing from skip to whatever version of ncurses you want to install, continue the installation, and finish.

  7. Run the installer again and this time you will expand Lib aka libraries.

  8. Find the terminfo library installer, and again change skip to the newest version, then continue and complete the installation.

NOTE You might end up having to log out of Windows and log back in, or just reboot before the new programs take effect. This is due to the possibility of Cygwin background session.

NOTE You also must do the three separate installations.

11
votes

Right click > Reset... (Alt + F8) worked for me... (on Cygwin-x86-2.830)

11
votes

I tried in my system: It works: 

Just use: cntrl+l

Hope this help!

7
votes

Open Windows Explorer then navigate to:

[Cygwin Installation Directory]\home\[User]\

e.g.: C:\cygwin\home\wreckseal

then open the file .bashrc with Notepad++.

Move your cursor at the end of the last line and hit Enter key, then add the text below.

alias cls='echo -e "\033c"'

or the text below:

alias cls='printf "\033c"'

Restart cygwin, type cls. Done!

Note that there's no scrollbar after sending the cls command. I prefer the printf version than the echo version. Try it yourself!

6
votes

General approach to such problems:
Search on the Cygwin-package search page with the full executable name.

Now the package search can be done in several ways:

And all of these 4 matches are now from the ncurses packages. (Namely 2 debug and 2 stable versions.

(Pro tip: Right-click the search-field and create a customized search engine. I have set this to the shortcut cp for "cygwin package" in both Firefox and Chrome.)

2
votes

I just came across this project and so far, I think it's awesome

https://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg

after installing it, you can run

apt-cyg install ncurses

I personally prefer installing libraries using this tool over the Cygwin tool b/c the Cygwin versions all have .exe appended to them, and can be cumbersome when copying and pasting Linux commands (off of SO, for instance).