It seems that with my terminal settings, I can pipe anything to "less" and then kill "less" and return to my command prompt without disturbing anything. Most programs that fill the terminal window also work this way -- when they exit, they remove themselves from the screen and show the screen as it was when they started. Unfortunately, "top" doesn't seem to work that way. It always leaves its text on the screen when it exits. Do any of you understand this problem or know how I can fix that? I find that this kinda works: top | less -rf It refreshes every time I hit the space bar, but sometimes when I exit I don't have my command prompt working as before. I find that the "reset" command fixes the command prompt, but "reset" with no options clears the screen -- just what I wanted to avoid. It seems that "reset -I" works and does not clear the screen. If I do this,... top | less -rf ; reset -I ... then I don't have to worry about about entering the reset command afterward. Maybe that's an OK strategy. Any ideas? Mike