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Selective Erase (DECSED)
DECSED (CSI ? Ps J) erases only unprotected characters, leaving characters with the protected attribute (DECSCA, SGR 1 m) intact. Used for form-based applications where static labels should survive screen clears.
How this is testedautomated
Write "ABCDE", move cursor home, send DECSED (
Write "ABCDE", move cursor home, send DECSED (
CSI ? 2 J), verify the text is erased. Confirms selective erase display is recognized.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 9 of 12 terminals (75%). Not supported by: vt100.js, Alacritty, WezTerm. Part of the Rich TUI baseline. Notes: vt100.js: DECSED not implemented — pure TypeScript emulator; Alacritty: DECSED (selective erase) not supported in alacritty; WezTerm: DECSED (selective erase) not supported in wezterm-term.
Supported by 11 of 14 backends (79%)
Terminal Applications
| Terminal | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iTerm2 | 3.6.9 | ✓ yes | |
| Ghostty | 1.3.1 | ✓ yes | |
| VS Code | ✓ yes | ||
| Warp | ✓ yes | ||
| Cursor | ✓ yes | ||
| Terminal.app | ✓ yes |
Headless Backends
Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.
| Backend | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitty | 0.40.0 | ✓ yes | |
| vterm | 0.2.0 | ✓ yes | |
| xterm.js | 5.5.0 | ✓ yes | |
| Alacritty | 0.26.0 | ✗ no | DECSED (selective erase) not supported in alacritty |
| vt100.js | 0.2.1 | ✗ no | DECSED not implemented — pure TypeScript emulator |
| WezTerm | 0.1.0-fork.5 | ✗ no | DECSED (selective erase) not supported in wezterm-term |