if your a frequent windows user than you know what im talking about.
this a better way (and 'permanant') than alias cls="clear" (which only lasts one time).

open termianl and:
sudo gedit
type: clear
and save as cls to the bin directory

(make it accessible) terminal commands:
sudo chmod a=r /bin/cls
sudo chmod a+x /bin/cls

thats it! now whenever by whoever types cls they will be able to clear the screen. Enjoy windows users!

If we put following line in /home/user/.bashrc file or in /etc/rc.local file, will it work every time?

Um I have heard that /.bashrc will store aliases, but I have never tried it my self...

I know if you do it my way than your less likely to overwrite/screw up an important file, and it ALWAYS WORKS with any user (root/guest/XXX etc...) just type "cls" (if your a newbie) I have screwed up my last Ubuntu by editing root read-only files before so.....

You should probably be using .bashrc or .bash_profile for things like this. It's much easier to change, it requires no root access, and it doesn't force every user on the system to follow the same rules. What if another user on your system wants "cls" to do something different, such as "clear; ls"?

Just stick "alias cls='clear'" into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile and you're done.

one of the first things I always tweak.

add
at the end of your file and will work without the quotes in squeeze.

control x + y to save

to put in into use without logging out do

that's one dot space dot bashrc

just my and that's all I got to say about that

1 members found this post helpful.

lol wut?

Another way to overcome this problem: type 'clear' 20 times on your keyboard. After that you will be typing 'clear' even in windows!

why are you making it bit more complex when there is already an easy solution?

I think this is the best answer.
I lose track of how many times I've typed 'ls' and 'rm' in Windows.

And why are you posting this, without actually telling us what the easy solution is???

Even easier, just make a system-wide symlink: "ln -s clear cls". Creating a one-line shell script and doing a chmod on it is making it much more complex than it needs to be.

The easy way is using .bashrc
This may sound more complicated but it is doing it correctly and only for the user[s] you chnage it for. It also means that if/when you upgrade your system as long as you keep your home partition you'll still have the workaround in place. Added to that, if you ever decided to work with Linux for a living this would be the right way to do it as it doesn't need root access (in case you're not root) and doesn't mess things up for other users.

bashrc and the other startup files are simply collections of shell commands that are executed during initialization. Everything stored in them is, and has to be, just a command that could also be run directly in the shell.

The startup files load in a particular order, as detailed in the INVOCATION section of the bash man page. Generally the system-wide /etc files load first, followed by your own home directory counterpart of the same file. This allows you to override or modify any system defaults with the desired settings for your own user.

Most users usually end up making at least some minor modifications to their startup files, starting with some aliases and personalized prompts. There have been some threads here discussing what people have added to theirs. I personally have a long, highly modified bashrc with a large selection of aliases, a couple of dozen shell functions, a number of shell option settings, and some other tweaks to make things work for me.

So don't be afraid to make modifications, as the only thing you can really mess up is the file itself. The worst case scenario is that you'll end up with an unusable shell session, which isn't much of a problem if you make sure you keep a second working shell open until you get everything working, and have backups to revert to if necessary. Just make sure you understand the basics of shell scripting before doing anything major.


One more thing many people like to do is set up all of their aliases in a separate file, then add a single command to your bashrc to source that into it. This way you don't have to worry about constantly modifying the main file; just add any new aliases to that "alias" file.


Just add this to your bashrc (or similar), pointing to your alias file:

1 members found this post helpful.

I DO work with Linux/Unix for a living, thanks. I do the link command on systems I'm the administrator for, which is the ONLY way you can do it, since the clear command is "/usr/bin/clear"; standard users can't write to /usr/bin.

And how does it "mess things up for other users", by creating that symlink?? Doesn't affect the clear command in any way, and makes users who type in "cls" now, have it to work with, without having to remember anything. If you've got 200 users on a server, and you don't push out the same .bashrc to them, and the cls command works for SOME of the users, and not for others....you'll have lots of fun dealing with them. And if you DO put the changes into default profile/template profile, that essentially does the same thing as the "ln -s" command...ALL users get a cls alias.

As long as your the only admin and you remember then of course it doesn't matter. It's also a very minor and practically rick free change. It seems like a strange thing to advise though since people may not want 'cls' aliased to 'clear' and if another admin comes along they may well break it anyhow.
The reason I advocate bashrc (or typing 'clear' 20 times) is because, to me at least, this is a personal preference and it would make me uncomfortable to recomend anyone make system wide chnages for preferences unless they knew what they were doing well enough to have worked it out for themselves.
Go ahead, do it, but don't expect the machine at the training centre, or the place you're visiting, or a remote machine to have it in place and tell your users not to use 'cls' in scripts for the same reasons.

Sorry, but I fail to see the whole point of this discussion. The command is cls on Windows and clear on Linux. Full stop. If you are not able to handle those two simple commands when you have to work on both systems, how do you handle more complex commands? Isn't it counterproductive to set it up that way (thinking that it tricks your brain to assume you are on a Windows machine when you actually are not, just because a few Windows commands work)?