What you are describing is the "alternate screen" feature that some terminal emulators have. The linux virtual console, for instance, doesn't have this feature.

not leaving a trace in your terminal.

Actually this is not 100% true. In xterm you can find "Show alternate screen" in the menu that opens when you hold down Ctrl-MiddleButton. Even after less has been quit, xterm still shows its display (of your secret files) in the alternate screen.

Update: Regarding your question how you can do this: I think that ncurses (which "less" uses) does this by default when you initiate the screen, so you should be able to do this with the Curses module (as atcroft suggests).

In reply to Re: "Less" perl output by betterworld
in thread "Less" perl output by downer

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.