* Adam Borowski [off-list ref], 2016-11-28, 00:15:

quoted

clear(1) doesn't wipe the scrollback at all, it is still reachable, all of 
it.

It does for me on the console.  The man page says:

# clear clears your screen if this is possible, including its scrollback
# buffer (if the extended "E3" capability is defined).  clear looks in the
# environment for the terminal type and then in the terminfo database to
# determine how to clear the screen.

Because of its reliance on terminfo, you need to have TERM=linux in your 
environment; also, screen/tmux obviously breaks this.

The "linux" terminfo entry didn't have E3 until very recently.
You will need ncurses >= 20160514.

-- 
Jakub Wilk