Your right! `cls` does indeed return an 'escape sequence' to perl. In this case, ascii 12 (form feed). I'm guessing that is a throw-over from DOS when clearing the screen was considered the glass-teletype equivalent of throwing a new page on a printer.

If I remember correctly, this is still how it is done on an OpenVMS system. The command to "clear the screen" is something like

$ PRINT NL:

This has the effect of outputting the NULL device to the screen. Have no idea how that would look using Perl, never got the opportunity to use Perl on OpenVMS (if anyone has a spare Alpha workstation gathering dust though.... :-)

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"Ex libris un peut de tout"