''I just want to clear the screen'' sounds like such a simple thing. Why is it difficult? Because there are so many types of screens! Are we talking about a terminal emulator program, like xterm, rxvt, telnet? Are we talking about a physical terminal on a serial line (vt220)? Is it a line printer???? Is it a Tk text widget? Here are a few ways: ====== exec clear >@ stdout ; # Most unix systems should have a clear command puts [exec clear] ; # The puts forces the connection to stdout? puts \x1B\[2J ; # for Solaris xterm - VERY terminal specific eval exec [auto_execok cls] ; # Most windows systems should have a cls exec command /c cls ; # DOS? exec >&@stdout $::env(COMSPEC) /c cls ; # Win95 $t delete 1.0 end ;# Tk text widget ====== ---- In [http://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.tcl/Fm4uNklI8l4/rtKtxDkGUIwJ%|%clear screen from within Tcl], [comp.lang.tcl], 2005-04-13, [Bruce Hartweg] suggests: ====== eval exec >&@stdout <@stdin [auto_execok cls] ====== [Ro]: ''Pretty neat tricks ;)'' ---- Angel Sosa: In addition the following examples clears the whole screen ''(on which platforms and for what kinds of machines?)'' ====== puts \x1b\[H\x1b\[2J ====== This initializes and clears the screen on a unix system with some sort of terminfo/termcap/curses library installation: : ====== exec tput clear >@ stdout ====== <> Text Screen