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DECRQCRA — checksum rectangular area

Category: editing · Baseline: legacy · Tags: VT510 · Specification ↗

CSI Pid ; Ppid ; Pt ; Pl ; Pb ; Pr * y
DECRQCRA (CSI Pid ; Ppid ; Pt ; Pl ; Pb ; Pr * y) computes a 16-bit checksum of the cells in a rectangular region and reports it back to the host as a DCS response (DCS Pid ! ~ checksum ST). Pid is a request identifier echoed in the response; Ppid is the page number. The checksum hashes both characters and SGR attributes, which is why it's used by DEC's terminal conformance test suites — a test script can paint a known pattern, ask the terminal for the checksum, and compare against an expected value to confirm the terminal rendered the pattern correctly. xterm still implements this. Almost no application has ever used it outside of test suites.
How this is testedpartial
Send \x1b[1;1;1;1;1;1*y (checksum cell 1,1), verify the sequence is consumed without literal output.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by all 9 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Unicode baseline.

Supported by 11 of 14 backends (79%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9✓ yessequence consumed
Ghostty1.3.1✓ yessequence consumed
Terminal.app2.15✓ yessequence consumed
Kitty0.46.2✓ yessequence consumed
VS Code1.113.0? unknown
Warp0.2026.03.18.08.24.03? unknown
Cursor2.6.21? unknown

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0✓ yes
vt100.js0.2.1✓ yes
vterm0.2.0✓ yes
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5✓ yes
xterm.js5.5.0✓ yes