CSI DSR — Device Status Report (incl. CPR)

frame

CSI introducer: \x1b[ ESC [ (0x1B 0x5B)

terminator (none): ST · BEL

parameters / subcommands

gotchas

• The CPR reply (CSI r ; c R) arrives on the terminal's INPUT stream; you must read from the tty and parse it, ideally with a timeout, or your program can block forever if no reply comes.
• CPR coordinates in the reply are 1-based, matching CUP.
• Querying CPR is the portable way to discover the cursor row/column (e.g. to detect terminal height by moving to row 999 then reading back).
• The DEC-private form (CSI ? 6 n / DECXCPR) reply is prefixed with '?' and includes a page number; a parser expecting the plain CPR form may choke on it.
• Some DSR sub-values (e.g. printer status CSI ? 15 n) are DEC/printer-specific and rarely implemented.

provenance

• source: https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
• version: xterm ctlseqs, patch #410, 2026/04/19
• retrieved: 2026-05-29 · updated: 2026-05-29T00:00:00Z

per-fact attribution:

• #summary — https://invisible-island.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html xterm ctlseqs: CSI Ps n = Device Status Report (DSR): Ps = 5 -> reply CSI 0 n (OK); Ps = 6 -> Report Cursor Position (CPR) as CSI r ; c R. DEC private CSI ? 6 n = DECXCPR.
• ext.params — https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-48/ ECMA-48 defines DSR (final 'n') and CPR (final 'R'); CPR reports active line then column.

see also

• terminal-csi/cup
• terminal-csi/da