CR Carriage Return

Move the cursor to the left margin of the current line.

CR

ECMA-48: §8.3.15 CR – Carriage Return, p. 35
DEC STD 070: §5.4.4 Carriage Return, p. 5-58
VT220: §4.2 Control Characters
VT510: 4.2 Control Characters

Move the cursor to the left margin of the line it is on. With no left margin set that is the first column. Nothing is erased, which is how a progress bar redraws itself in place.

With left and right margins enabled (CSI ? 69 h), the cursor goes to the left margin if it is at or right of it. A cursor already left of the left margin goes to the first column instead.

A carriage return cancels any pending wrap, as DEC STD 070 asks (§D.6.1, p. D-14) and xterm’s CarriageReturn does: the next character is written at the start of this line, not the next one.

Support

Terminal	Version	Support	Notes
VT220	manual, 2nd ed., 1984	Yes	§4.2 Control Characters
VT510	manual, 1st ed., 1993	Yes	Table 4–1
xterm	patch 412, xterm-411a	Yes
libghostty-vt	0f171f6	Yes
kitty	0.49.1, run in a VM	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
foot	1.28.0, run in a VM	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
pyte	0.8.2, run as a library	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
xterm.js headless	6.0.0, run as a library	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
alacritty_terminal	0.26.0, run as a library	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
rxvt-unicode	9.31, run in a VM	Partly	fails CR-3 of the 4 cases that show it working
VTE	0.84.1, run as a library	Yes	passes the 4 cases that show it working

Validation

CR-1: Back to the start

ABC
\r
X

|XBC__|
cursor 1,2

CR-2: Cancels a pending wrap

ABCDE     # fills the line; a wrap is pending
\r
X

|XBCDE|
|_____|
cursor 1,2

CR-3: To the left margin

\e[?69h   # allow left and right margins
\e[3;5s   # margins at columns 3 and 5
\e[1;4H
\r
X

|__X__|

CR-4: Left of the left margin

\e[?69h   # allow left and right margins
\e[3;5s   # margins at columns 3 and 5
\e[1;2H
\r
X

|X____|