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DECERA — erase rectangular area
CSI Pt ; Pl ; Pb ; Pr $ zDECERA (
CSI Pt ; Pl ; Pb ; Pr $ z) erases a rectangular region from rows Pt-Pb, columns Pl-Pr, replacing each cell with a space and the current SGR background. Unlike a global ED, DECERA leaves protected characters (set via DECSCA) untouched, making it safe inside form-fill applications that have static labels alongside editable fields. Companion to DECFRA. Another VT420-era feature surviving mostly in xterm and mintty.How this is testedautomated
Write text across multiple rows, send
Write text across multiple rows, send
\x1b[1;1;3;5$z (erase rows 1-3, cols 1-5), verify cells in the rectangle are blank.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 9 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Unicode baseline.
Supported by 8 of 14 backends (57%)
Terminal Applications
| Terminal | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iTerm2 | 3.6.9 | ✓ yes | sequence consumed |
| Ghostty | 1.3.1 | ✓ yes | sequence consumed |
| VS Code | ✓ yes | ||
| Warp | ✓ yes | ||
| Cursor | ✓ yes | ||
| Terminal.app | ✓ yes |
Headless Backends
Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.
| Backend | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alacritty | 0.26.0 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |
| Kitty | 0.40.0 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |
| vt100.js | 0.2.1 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |
| vterm | 0.2.0 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |
| WezTerm | 0.1.0-fork.5 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |
| xterm.js | 5.5.0 | ✗ no | VT420 rectangular area operations not implemented — legacy DEC features omitted by most modern terminals |