Python: Restore Terminal Contents with Curses Like Vim

Question

Right now, after my Python program that uses curses exits, I'm left with a blank screen. Anything that I'd done prior to running my program is no longer visible.

How can I make it so that after my curses program exits, the prior contents is visible, IE, the way that less , man , and vim do on *nix.

Extra details: I'm using the Windows console, so *nix terminal commands won't work. For anyone wondering how I managed to get curses working on Windows, see my answer over here .

My question is exactly the same as this one , except mine is specific to Python (not C) and Windows (not *nix).

Answer 1

PDCurses attempts to save the screen contents when it starts, and to restore it it you have set the PDC_RESTORE_SCREEN environment variable (for Windows, of course).

By attempts , I mean that this may fail. Windows(using the [ReadConsoleOutput][1] function) has a 64KB buffer used for this purpose, and large screensizes (especially counting the scrollback) may be too large. If it cannot save the whole buffer, it tries to save/restore only the part that you see (the "window"). Even that could be too large, of course.

In a quick check of ncurses on the other hand, I do not see this problem (so the problem lies in PDCurses).

From more reading (eg, this question ), I see that you are likely using UniCurses for Python , which would be more interesting if it were not for the fact that its author chose to license it in a way that precludes its inclusion in any python, ncurses (or PDCurses) release.

Answer 2

curses.endwin() should do the trick.

Here's the documentation explaining it.

Also, here's where I've personally used this function .