Escape Sequence Cheat Sheet

A single-page reference. Every row includes a shell command that generates it, so you can watch a real terminal do it.

CSI = ESC [ = 1b 5b · OSC = ESC ] = 1b 5d · SS3 = ESC O = 1b 4f · ST = ESC \ = 1b 5c · DCS = ESC P = 1b 50

A missing parameter means the sequence's default, which is usually 1 — never 0.

C0 Controls

Cursor Movement

All cursor movement clears the pending-wrap flag.

Erase

Erased cells take the current SGR background — printf '\033[41m\033[2J' gives a red screen.

Insert / Delete / Scroll

IL/DL/SU/SD operate within the scroll region only; IL/DL are no-ops outside it.

SGR (Attributes and Color)

printf '\033[1;31mbold red\033[0m\n'
printf '\033[38;5;196mpalette 196\033[0m\n'
printf '\033[38;2;255;100;0mtruecolor\033[0m\n'
printf '\033[4:3;58;5;196mcurly red underline\033[0m\n'
for i in $(seq 0 255); do printf "\033[48;5;%dm %3d \033[0m" $i $i
  [ $(( (i+1) % 16 )) -eq 0 ] && echo; done

Palette layout: 0–7 standard · 8–15 bright · 16–231 a 6×6×6 cube (16 + 36r + 6g + b) · 232–255 grayscale.

DEC Private Modes (CSI ? Ps h set · CSI ? Ps l reset)

ANSI modes (no ?): 4 IRM (insert/replace) · 20 LNM (LF also does CR).

Always reset mouse and alt-screen modes on exit, on every path including panic. Leaving them on makes the user's shell emit garbage on every click.

Scroll Region and Reset

Tabs

Default: every 8 columns.

Reports and Queries (the terminal replies)

CSI 6n is the best probe for differential testing: it makes the terminal report its internal state machine-readably.

OSC (String Sequences)

Terminated by BEL (07) or ST (ESC \).

Charsets

DEC Special Graphics maps lqkxjmtuvwn to ┌─┐│┘└├┤┬┴┼. If a program's box drawing shows as lqqqk, this is the missing feature.

Quick Diagnostic Recipes

# Where is the cursor, really?
cursor() { printf '\033[6n'; read -r -d R p; echo "${p#*[}"; }

# Does this terminal do truecolor, or is it quantizing?
awk 'BEGIN{for(i=0;i<256;i++)printf "\033[48;2;%d;0;0m ",i; print "\033[0m"}'
#   smooth = truecolor;  banded = 256-color

# What sequences does a program actually emit?
script -q -c 'vim -u NONE -c q' /dev/null | cat -v | head -40

# Recover a terminal wrecked by a crashed TUI:
printf '\033c'        # RIS, hard reset
reset                 # or this
stty sane             # if input is broken (may need Ctrl+J instead of Enter)

# Turn OFF everything a crashed program may have left on:
printf '\033[?1000l\033[?1002l\033[?1003l\033[?1006l\033[?2004l\033[?1004l\033[?25h\033[?1049l\033[0m'

See also: Glossary · termios Cheat Sheet · Key Encoding Table · The CSI Catalog