Termion

Termion is a Rust library for terminal manipulation that emits ANSI escape sequences to control the terminal. It aims to be lightweight and dependency-free, offering a pure Rust API for building interactive command-line applications without relying on native GUI toolkits or C libraries. The library targets ANSI-compatible terminals and emphasizes simplicity and portability.

Termion provides a range of features organized into modules for common terminal tasks. These include cursor movement and visibility, screen handling (such as an alternate screen), color and style attributes, and commands to clear or erase parts of the screen. It also offers terminal size queries and a raw mode facility that disables line buffering and echo. Input handling is supported through an event-based API, enabling applications to react to key presses (and, where supported, mouse events) from standard input.

In typical usage, developers wrap standard output in a raw mode wrapper, emit ANSI sequences through the library’s helpers to position the cursor or change styling, and read input events from standard input to drive interactivity. The API favors direct generation of escape codes over higher-level widget abstractions, making it a lightweight alternative to larger terminal UI toolkits.

Termion is one of several Rust terminal libraries and relies on ANSI escape codes rather than platform-specific terminal APIs. This approach offers broad compatibility on capable terminals, while Windows support depends on the terminal environment in use. It is commonly contrasted with alternatives such as crossterm and ncurses bindings in Rust.