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CUU stops at top

Category: cursor · Baseline: core · Tags: ECMA-48 Standard, VT100 · Specification ↗

CUU (Cursor Up, CSI Pn A) should stop at the top margin of the scroll region, or row 1 if no scroll region is set. Moving up with a count exceeding the current row should clamp to row 0 rather than wrapping to the bottom. This prevents cursor escape from the visible area and is relied upon by screen-clearing routines that use large CUU counts.
How this is testedautomated
Position at row 3, send \x1b[999A (CUU with count 999), verify cursor stopped at row 0.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by all 12 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.

Supported by 14 of 14 backends (100%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9✓ yes
Ghostty1.3.1✓ yes
VS Code✓ yes
Warp✓ yes
Cursor✓ yes
Terminal.app✓ yes

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0✓ yes
Kitty0.40.0✓ yes
vt100.js0.2.1✓ yes
vterm0.2.0✓ yes
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5✓ yes
xterm.js5.5.0✓ yes