Switching Focus to Command Line

I am looking for a keyboard shortcut that will set the focus on the command line.  Nearest I could find is Shift-Tab does it but it does not change the colour of the text Command: above the line to blue right away.  If I type the first letter of the command, then it turns blue.  If I want to recall previous commands, I can hit the up/down arrows.  Are there any down-sides to doing this?

Also, I can clear the previous commands from the window with "clear" but is there a way to clear the command history recalled with up/down arrow keys?

This should help : https://librecad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/cmdline.html?highlight=command#the-command-line. Check also keycode-mode.

Thanks for the response.  I had read through that and did not find answers. I found, by trial, another (probably benign) way to get focus by hitting a letter key that is not the first letter of a command or alias such as "q".  From there, I can use my up/down arrow keys to recall a previously used command.

I have not found a way to clear the previous commands from the buffer, short of closing the program.

There were efforts in past to automatically focus command line with any keyboard input.
But from own experience I know, that this sometimes stops working.
It may depend of the status of active tool, but I have no rule yet, when it happens and how to get it working again.

The main shortcut to focus the command line is CTRL-M, which should work always, at least from my experience.
This is documented in the manual

Thanks LOB, for the link.  I don't know how I overlooked CTRL-M as I read that section several times.

As for clearing the previously used commands buffer, how could I make a feature request for the "Clear" command to also clear the buffer?

If you have a github account, you can open an issue at https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/issues.
Or you can make the request in the Suggestion topic on this forum.

LordofBikes recently suggested I try latest release 2.2.1 AppImage to fix a Print to PDF issue I had.

I tried that but then this thread's issue popped up where I was losing the first keystroke of my keycode. I read up on ways to activate command line but even -spacebar- was another additional keystroke from previous 2.2.0.2 version where the keystroke activated the command line which I liked. I have not knowingly experienced the function to stop working but then I'm quick on the double Esc key to reset things. So for the time being I've gone back to 2.2.0.2.

Thanks for the comments and help.