I have used the C-l shortcut in ZSH to clear the
screen for as long as I can remember. When I started using
Eshell, one of
the first problems I encountered was the inability to clear the buffer. I like
to remove the output of previous commands to be able to focus on the current
one, so let us script Emacs once again.
After a quick look to the eshell module, it seems we can do that in two
steps:
- Clear the entire buffer with
(eshell/clear t). - Recreate the prompt with
(eshell-emit-prompt).
A non-obvious edge case is that it should be possible to hit C-l while
typing a command without losing what was typed. For that, we have to keep a
copy of the input content before clearing the screen and reinsert it after.
The result is the following function:
(defun g-eshell-clear ()
(interactive)
(let ((input (eshell-get-old-input)))
(eshell/clear t)
(eshell-emit-prompt)
(insert input)))
We then write a hook which binds the function to C-l:
(defun g-eshell-init-keys ()
(define-key eshell-mode-map (kbd "C-l") 'g-eshell-clear))
And register the hook:
(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'g-eshell-init-keys)
Note that clearing the screen means removing shell history from the buffer.
Not really an issue: instead of looking in the buffer, I use
helm-eshell-history which is much more convenient.