Re: Ctrl-L in editline

[rjc@math.Princeton.EDU (Raymond Chen)]

malte@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de claims that Ctrl-L should clear the entire
screen instead of merely redrawing the current line.

I forcefully disagree.  Why should Ctrl-L clear the screen?  Ctrl-L in
emacs, vi, and most curses-based programs is the ``redraw current
screen'' command, not the ``clear current screen'' command.  Since
editline's ``screen'' is but a single line, it should redraw only that
line.

Imagine:  I've just received a `talk' request.  My friend Byron is
coming in from a machine I've never seen before with a complicated
name, so I have to type his address in very carefully.

    talk tbrakitz@phoe

and *BLAM* some line noise hits my modem.  I want to get rid of the line
noise, so I type Ctrl-L to get readline to reprint my current command.
But wait, that Ctrl-L also zapped my current screen!  Ugh, that also
erased byron's address!  I'm hosed!

If you want the screen to clear, type ``clear''.  Thank you.

ObRcHack:  Set your prompt to

    prompt = ('; ' ':\010')

This way, continuation lines are prompted with a `:', but the `:'
is erased by your typing.  You get the benefit of a prompt (to let
you know you miscounted your quotation marks), yet the prompt doesn't
stop you from snarfing-and-barfing.  (If you want to type a blank
line, remember to type `space backspace enter' instead.)