2

On several Unix servers, I have seen below behavior:

  • I list all the files using ls -lrt: 3 files are being shown up
  • I open one of the files using vi editor
  • I close the open file

Now in some Unix system, I can still see the earlier screen as it is as in point 2 (listing those 3 files, ls -lrt output as it is) whereas on some systems, the text of recently opened file is printed.

I want to know which setting in profile or some *rc file this behavior depends.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
  • 829,060
Swapnil K
  • 31

1 Answers1

5

That sounds like the xterm alternate screen feature (implemented in most terminal emulators which have some similarity to xterm, including rxvt).

xterm maintains its output window in three parts:

  • the normal screen, as large as the window,
  • the scrollback, to which lines are copied as the window becomes full, and
  • the alternate screen, to which xterm can switch to/from when displaying "full-screen" programs.

The switching is done using an escape sequence. By convention, that may be part of the terminal description's initialization (and ending) capabilities: termcap ti and te or terminfo smcup and rmcup. This is a convention (neither termcap nor terminfo have a special capability for this feature), and since some users do, while others do not want it, the terminal descriptions differ.

Further reading:

Assorted advice (not all good, either way):

Community
  • 1
Thomas Dickey
  • 76,765