"Washing" the Window

After even one ls command in an Xterm window, things might start feeling a little crowded. We can always exit from the terminal window and open a new one, but here's a quicker way to wipe the slate clean.

Just type:

clear

at the shell prompt. The clear command does just as advertised: it clears the terminal screen.

Sometimes, you may accidentally open a program file or some other non-text file in a terminal window. Once you close the file, you could find that the text you're typing doesn't match with the output on the monitor.

In such cases, you simply have to type:

reset

to return the window to its default values.

Summary: To clear clutter in a console or Xterm window type clear; to return an Xterm window to its default display properties, type reset.