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Erase line (EL 2)
ESC [ 2 KEL 2 erases the entire current line. The sequence is
ESC [ 2 K. The cursor position is not changed. Used to clear a full line before rewriting it.
EL belongs to the ECMA-48 erase family inherited by VT-style terminals. Full-line erase is commonly paired with carriage return when redrawing progress bars, prompts, and status rows. A useful compatibility check is that EL clears cells without moving the cursor, because applications often erase and then immediately write replacement content at the same location.How this is testedautomated
Write "XXXXX", send
Write "XXXXX", send
\x1b[2K (EL 2), 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 |