Julia Evans
xn--rpa.cc · Personal blog · on HN since 2017
Julia Evans writes about terminals, ANSI escape codes, shell scripting, and infrastructure, often with a blunt, opinionated tone.
What HN saysHN commenters link her terminal control tutorial as a reference on ANSI escape codes and as an argument against heavy TUI dependencies like ncurses.
16HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
15stories submitted
477story points
7 months agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Everything you ever wanted to know about terminals12 people · 466 points · first shared 2019 · 177 comments on HN
- 2Everything you ever wanted to know about terminals2 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · 4 comments on HN
- 3Infrastructure 101 or, 1,001 Fun Ways Mastodon Could And Probably Will End Badly1 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 4Everything_on_terminals_colour_codes_and_control1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 5Stateful CSS1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 6Ansiglot – Try curling the website on the terminal1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7Shebangs and busybox, and why it's impossible to write portable shell scripts1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ivanjermakov · 2025-09-15
> minimal
50 Go dependencies for TUI is crazy. Recommend reading https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html
fao_ · 2026-04-12
> The catch: the shell normally puts the terminal in *cooked mode,*
Yeah, that's not the name of the mode. In this sense, it's "canonical mode". Description reads like AI slop where technical content was reformatted into marketing/PRspeak. It feels like a 30 year old PR representative desperately trying to twist any kind of technical language specifically to pander to the AAVE-derived slang of the younger set of internet-addled minds.
As a result, this does not interest me.
For anyone who is interested in ANSI terminal stuff, or building their own, Lexi Hale had a decent article on this: https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html which got discussion here about eight years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436860
mouse_ · 2025-03-23
related: "On Terminal Control" https://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html
a1369209993 · 2021-08-30
> http://%CA%9E.cc/irl/term.html
Link is broken (malformed); should be (I think) http://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html.
andrewstuart · 2020-09-09
When I saw this message I was reminded of a post I read recently:
http://xn--rpa.cc/irl/term.html
Here's how it starts:
"so here's a short tutorial on ansi escape codes and terminal control, because you philistines won't stop using ncurses and oh my god WHY ARE WE STILL USING NCURSES IT IS THE TWENTY FIRST FUCKING CENTURY"