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Accepted
Alex Leach
Asked: 2011-05-17 01:32:30 +0800 CST

GNU screen clearing on vim,less,etc. exit

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I'm very new to screen but have configured my ~/.screenrc file according to various recommendations I've found on the internet. I have one issue with it though which I'm sure could be resolved very easily; I think it's a termcap setting..?

After using less, vim, top, or other programs in standalone bash (on Mac OSX 10.6), upon exiting these programs, the terminal's buffer will clear and the line above the current command line will be the previous command I entered.
However, with screen, when I exit any of these programs, the screen buffer won't clear / refresh and I'll still see what I was looking at inside that program.. Make sense??

e.g. in standalone bash (without screen):-

hostname:~ auser$ vim afile 
[do stuff in file, then :q to exit]

After exiting I'll see:-

hostname:~ auser$ vim afile 
hostname:~ auser$

But in screen:-

bash-3.2$ vim afile
[do stuff in file, then :q to exit]

After exiting I'll see a whole screen of:-

~  # [Empty lines in vim are represented by these tilda characters. ]
...
~  # [ Every line on the screen is one of these tildas ]
bash-3.2$   # [ This is the bottom line in the terminal ]

I hope that makes some sort of sense. Any & all help much appreciated! TIA

bash gnu-screen

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The answer lies in the terminal capabilities of both the "real" terminal that you are using and the terminal that is presented to applications via screen. Applications performing their terminal I/O via screen see a terminal of type screen. Your "real" terminal could be anything from xterm to vt100. (Use printenv TERM or equivalent to find out.)

    TUI applcations like vim and less tailor their behaviour to whatever the terminal that they find themselves talking to is capable of. This answer is far too short for a detailed exposition of the mechanics of the terminfo mechanism, or even for the mechanics of how programs like vim and less make use of it. There are whole books on this stuff. A very brief précis is that your "real" terminal is advertising a capability that the screen terminal is not.

    Plus, of course, this has already been answered on SuperUser at length, here and here and here.

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  2. put altscreen on in ~/.screenrc or Control+a:altscreen+Return

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