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radman
Asked: 2010-06-18 15:58:35 +0800 CST

Reverse bash console text flow

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This is a bit of a weird question and I'm not sure that there is any easy answer to it but I am very interested in finding a solution.

So when I work on a linux machine via a console I find that I am constantly staring at the bottom of the screen, as once you have executed a bunch of commands text fills toward the bottom. Now I find that this is decidedly not good for my neck and it would be far better if instead of scrolling to the bottom, the text would scroll to the top instead.

So does anyone out there know if there is a way to reverse the direction text appears in a console?

(note that i am aware of the clear command)

Example:
default behaviour 

user@machine:~$ command 1  
user@machine:~$ command 2  
user@machine:~$ command 3  
user@machine:~$ __active_prompt__

desired behaviour 

user@machine:~$ __active_prompt__  
user@machine:~$ command 3  
user@machine:~$ command 2  
user@machine:~$ command 1

Running Kubuntu 10.04 using Konsole

I realise this is an odd question, thanks for any help.

terminal console

2 Answers

  1. This would be a very odd behavior. The main reason is this: How would it handle the output from any command which generates several lines, such as ls or cat? If you have a screen which scrolls opposite of normal, it would print cat ./foo in reverse order. I think your best option is to go with the comment left by Zypher and just move the monitor. Standards are great, but trivial standards which cause the opposite of their intent are worthless. Do what works best for you in your situation.

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  2. I've been thinking about this for a while. It seems to me that you should hack the bash source so that carriage return moves the prompt up instead of down. I bet this is a simple hack once you find the right place in the source.

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