This cool hack uses the terminal capabilities (see terminfo(5) manual) smcup and rmcup to save and restore the terminal content.
For sure, you’ve already seen those programs that restore the terminal contents after they did their work (like vim).
# save, clear screen tput smcup clear # example "application" follows... read -n1 -p "Press any key to continue..." # example "application" ends here # restore tput rmcup