Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I wonder if we can do something like > ... > to tentatively give a message without permanently wasting the > vertical space. Learning from 13e4760a ("recv_sideband: Do not use ANSI escape sequence on dumb terminals.", 2008-01-08), I think the above should be more like this: git_spawn_editor() { static const char *finish; if (!finish) { const char ANSI_FINISH[] = "\r\033[K"; const char DUMB_FINISH[] = "done.\n"; char *term = getenv("TERM"); if (term && strcmp(term, "dumb")) finish = ANSI_FINISH; else finish = DUMB_FINISH; } /* notice the lack of terminating LF */ fprintf(stderr, "Launched your editor, waiting..."); fflush(stderr); if (!run_command(... spawn the editor ...)) fputs(finish, stderr); else fprintf(stderr, "failed (%s)\n", strerror(errno)); fflush(stderr); }