On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 02:04:51PM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote: > If that doesn't do what you want then I don't think the functionality > you request exists.
That's probably technically true. But on the other hand, I can see where his question is coming from. If you're on an rxvt or something, with a reasonably-sized scrollback buffer, and you do a "tput clear" or its equivalent, you only lose the lines that were on the visible part of the terminal at that time -- the rest of the scrollback buffer is still there. Perhaps the best solution for the original question is to send ${LINES:-24} newline characters to the terminal instead of clearing it. That should push the information that's currently visible "up" into the scrollback buffer, where he wants it to be.