Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 14:59:42 -0400
Message-Id: <199905021859.OAA31550@envy.delorie.com>
From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <004901be94cb$5c14ede0$c5275da6@siegfried>
	(john_meyer AT geocities DOT com)
Subject: Re: How to clear the screen in MS-DOS?
References: <372beee0 DOT 3164117 AT netnews DOT worldnet DOT att DOT net> <199905021832 DOT OAA13903 AT envy DOT delorie DOT com> <004901be94cb$5c14ede0$c5275da6 AT siegfried>
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> <sarcasm>Why, DJ, you're advocating non-ISO standard C++.  How could you!
> </sarcasm>
> 
> I've been reading too much of comp.lang.c++

There is no way of doing device-specific things in a portable way.
clrscr() is in both djgpp and borland and always works in djgpp.  You
could print "\033[0;0H\033[2J" but that only works if ANSI.SYS is
installed, and won't work under Unix for non-ansi terminals.  You
could use __dpmi_int() to do the BIOS interrupt to reinit the current
mode, but that's djgpp-specific.

The best you can hope for for portability is to uses curses or
termcap, assuming you can determine what parts of curses/termcap work
the same way on all platforms (and can *find* curses/termcap for all
platforms).

As for standards, use them when you can but don't be blind to
non-standard solutions when they make sense.