Appearance
Erase above (ED 1)
ESC [ 1 JED 1 erases from the beginning of the screen to the cursor position (inclusive). The sequence is
ESC [ 1 J. Clears all content above and to the left of the cursor.
ED 1 is less visible than clear-screen operations, but it completes the ECMA-48 erase triad: below, above, and all. Full-screen applications use it when restoring or redrawing only part of a viewport. Like the rest of the ED family, it acts on displayed cells and should not be confused with scrollback erasure.How this is testedautomated
Write three lines, position cursor at row 3 col 2, send
Write three lines, position cursor at row 3 col 2, send
\x1b[1J (ED 1), verify cell at (0,0) is blank.The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.
Analysis2026-05-17
Supported by all 12 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.
Supported by 13 of 14 backends (93%)
Terminal Applications
| Terminal | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iTerm2 | 3.6.9 | ✓ yes | |
| Ghostty | 1.3.1 | ✓ yes | |
| VS Code | ✓ yes | ||
| Warp | ✓ yes | ||
| Kitty | 0.46.2 | ✓ yes | |
| Cursor | ✓ yes | ||
| Terminal.app | ✓ yes |