On 2020-12-27 at 13:24:34 +1100,
Steven D'Aprano <st...@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).
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