1tic(1M) tic(1M)
2
6 tic - the terminfo entry-description compiler
7
9 tic [-01CDGIKLNTUVWacfgqrstx] [-e names] [-o dir] [-Q[n]] [-R subset]
10 [-v[n]] [-w[n]] file
11
13 The tic command translates a terminfo file from source format into com‐
14 piled format. The compiled format is necessary for use with the li‐
15 brary routines in ncurses(3X).
16 As described in term(5), the database may be either a directory tree
18 (one file per terminal entry) or a hashed database (one record per en‐
19 try). The tic command writes only one type of entry, depending on how
20 it was built:
21 • For directory trees, the top-level directory, e.g., /usr/share/ter‐
23 minfo, specifies the location of the database.
24 • For hashed databases, a filename is needed. If the given file is
26 not found by that name, but can be found by adding the suffix
27 ".db", then that is used.
28 The default name for the hashed database is the same as the default
30 directory name (only adding a ".db" suffix).
31 In either case (directory or hashed database), tic will create the con‐
33 tainer if it does not exist. For a directory, this would be the “ter‐
34 minfo” leaf, versus a "terminfo.db" file.
35 The results are normally placed in the system terminfo database
37 /usr/share/terminfo. The compiled terminal description can be placed
38 in a different terminfo database. There are two ways to achieve this:
39 • First, you may override the system default either by using the -o
41 option, or by setting the variable TERMINFO in your shell environ‐
42 ment to a valid database location.
43 • Secondly, if tic cannot write in /usr/share/terminfo or the loca‐
45 tion specified using your TERMINFO variable, it looks for the di‐
46 rectory $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db); if
47 that location exists, the entry is placed there.
48 Libraries that read terminfo entries are expected to check in succes‐
50 sion
51 • a location specified with the TERMINFO environment variable,
53 • $HOME/.terminfo,
55 • directories listed in the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable,
57 • a compiled-in list of directories (no default value), and
59 • the system terminfo database (/usr/share/terminfo).
61 ALIASES
63 This is the same program as infotocap and captoinfo; usually those are
64 linked to, or copied from this program:
65 • When invoked as infotocap, tic sets the -I option.
67 • When invoked as captoinfo, tic sets the -C option.
69 OPTIONS
71 -0 restricts the output to a single line
72 -1 restricts the output to a single column
74 -a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than dis‐
76 carding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
77 a period. This sets the -x option, because it treats the com‐
78 mented-out entries as user-defined names. If the source is
79 termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6.
80 Otherwise these are ignored.
81 -C Force source translation to termcap format. Note: this differs
83 from the -C option of infocmp(1M) in that it does not merely
84 translate capability names, but also translates terminfo strings
85 to termcap format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
86 left in the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
87 with two preceding dots. The actual format used incorporates
88 some improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
89 For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the -K option.
90 If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to re‐
92 port cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact equiv‐
93 alent in termcap form. For example:
94 • sgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the
96 ability to work with more than two parameters, and because
97 termcap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators used
98 in terminfo.
99 • capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before
101 the end of the string will not convert completely.
102 -c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax prob‐
104 lems and bad use-links. If you specify -C (-I) with this op‐
105 tion, the code will print warnings about entries which, after
106 use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a
107 fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy
108 checking for the buffer length (and a documented limit in ter‐
109 minfo), these entries may cause core dumps with other implemen‐
110 tations.
111 tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parame‐
113 ters will be valid expressions. It does this check only for the
114 predefined string capabilities; those which are defined with the
115 -x option are ignored.
116 -D tells tic to print the database locations that it knows about,
118 and exit. The first location shown is the one to which it would
119 write compiled terminal descriptions. If tic is not able to
120 find a writable database location according to the rules summa‐
121 rized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an error
122 rather than printing a list of database locations.
123 -e names
125 Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated
126 list of terminals. If any name or alias of a terminal matches
127 one of the names in the list, the entry will be written or
128 translated as normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for
129 it. The option value is interpreted as a file containing the
130 list if it contains a '/'. (Note: depending on how tic was com‐
131 piled, this option may require -I or -C.)
132 -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/en‐
134 dif expressions indented for readability.
135 -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
137 character equivalents.
138 -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
140 their decimal equivalents.
141 -I Force source translation to terminfo format.
143 -K Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
145 e.g., "\s" for space.
146 -L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
148 variable names listed in <term.h>
149 -N Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating from termcap
151 to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of assumptions about
152 the defaults of string capabilities reset1_string, carriage_re‐
153 turn, cursor_left, cursor_down, scroll_forward, tab, newline,
154 key_backspace, key_left, and key_down, then attempts to use ob‐
155 solete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values. It also
156 normally suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities such
157 as bs. This option forces a more literal translation that also
158 preserves the obsolete capabilities.
159 -odir Write compiled entries to given database location. Overrides
161 the TERMINFO environment variable.
162 -Qn Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the
164 compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form, depend‐
165 ing on the option's value:
166 1 hexadecimal
168 2 base64
170 3 hexadecimal and base64
172 -q Suppress comments and blank lines when showing translated
174 source.
175 -Rsubset
177 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
178 archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP-
179 UX that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo;
180 and outright broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their own ex‐
181 tensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI. Available subsets are
182 “SVr1”, “Ultrix”, “HP”, “BSD” and “AIX”; see terminfo(5) for de‐
183 tails.
184 -r Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc capabili‐
186 ties) even when doing translation to termcap format. This may
187 be needed if you are preparing a termcap file for a termcap li‐
188 brary (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap
189 through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc capabilities
190 per entry.
191 -s Summarize the compile by showing the database location into
193 which entries are written, and the number of entries which are
194 compiled.
195 -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
197 mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled de‐
198 scriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter‐
199 minfo).
200 -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
202 translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabili‐
203 ties are commented-out.
204 -U tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source
206 file. Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in older
207 terminfo data, or in termcaps.
208 -V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
210 exits.
211 -vn specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error trace
213 information showing tic's progress.
214 The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 9, inclusive, indi‐
216 cating the desired level of detail of information.
217 • If ncurses is built without tracing support, the optional pa‐
219 rameter is ignored.
220 • If n is omitted, the default level is 1.
222 • If n is specified and greater than 1, the level of detail is
224 increased, and the output is written (with tracing informa‐
225 tion) to the “trace” file.
226 The debug flag levels are as follows:
228 1 Names of files created and linked
230 2 Information related to the “use” facility
232 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
234 4 Details of extended capabilities
236 5 (unused)
238 6 (unused)
240 7 Entries into the string-table
242 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
244 9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
246 -W By itself, the -w option will not force long strings to be
248 wrapped. Use the -W option to do this.
249 If you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
251 -f has already split the line.
252 -wn specifies the width of the output. The parameter is optional. If
254 it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
255 -x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined (see user_caps(5)).
257 That is, if you supply a capability name which tic does not recog‐
258 nize, it will infer its type (boolean, number or string) from the
259 syntax and make an extended table entry for that. User-defined
260 capability strings whose name begins with “k” are treated as func‐
261 tion keys.
262 PARAMETERS
264 file contains one or more terminfo terminal descriptions in source
265 format [see terminfo(5)]. Each description in the file de‐
266 scribes the capabilities of a particular terminal.
267 If file is “-”, then the data is read from the standard input.
269 The file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
270 PROCESSING
272 All but one of the capabilities recognized by tic are documented in
273 terminfo(5). The exception is the use capability.
274 When a use=entry-name field is discovered in a terminal entry currently
276 being compiled, tic reads in the binary from /usr/share/terminfo to
277 complete the entry. (Entries created from file will be used first.
278 tic duplicates the capabilities in entry-name for the current entry,
279 with the exception of those capabilities that explicitly are defined in
280 the current entry.
281 When an entry, e.g., entry_name_1, contains a use=entry_name_2 field,
283 any canceled capabilities in entry_name_2 must also appear in en‐
284 try_name_1 before use= for these capabilities to be canceled in en‐
285 try_name_1.
286 Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes. The name field cannot
288 exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
289 (32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
290 will be truncated to the maximum alias length and a warning message
291 will be printed.
292
294 System V Release 2 provided a tic utility. It accepted a single op‐
295 tion: -v (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross Ridge's
296 comment in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent can‐
297 celled capabilities.
298 System V Release 3 provided a different tic utility, written by Pavel
300 Curtis, (originally named “compile” in pcurses). This added an option
301 -c to check the file for errors, with the caveat that errors in “use=”
302 links would not be reported. System V Release 3 documented a few warn‐
303 ing messages which did not appear in pcurses. While the program itself
304 was changed little as development continued with System V Release 4,
305 the table of capabilities grew from 180 (pcurses) to 464 (Solaris).
306 In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
308 from mytinfo to extend the pcurses table to 469 capabilities (456
309 matched SVr4, 8 were only in SVr4, 13 were not in SVr4). Of those 13,
310 11 were ultimately discarded (perhaps to match the draft of X/Open
311 Curses). The exceptions were memory_lock_above and memory_unlock (see
312 user_caps(5)).
313 Eric Raymond incorporated parts of mytinfo into ncurses to implement
315 the termcap-to-terminfo source conversion, and extended that to begin
316 development of the corresponding terminfo-to-termcap source conversion,
317 Thomas Dickey completed that development over the course of several
318 years.
319 In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the -x option to support user-defined ca‐
321 pabilities.
322 In 2010, Roy Marples provided a tic program and terminfo library for
324 NetBSD. That implementation adapts several features from ncurses, in‐
325 cluding tic's -x option.
326 The -c option tells tic to check for problems in the terminfo source
328 file. Continued development provides additional checks:
329 • pcurses had 8 warnings
331 • ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
333 • Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
335 • NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
337 • ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
339 The checking done in ncurses' tic helps with the conversion to termcap,
341 as well as pointing out errors and inconsistencies. It is also used to
342 ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities. There are 527
343 distinct capabilities in ncurses' terminal database; 128 of those are
344 user-defined.
345
347 X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of tic. It
348 lists one option: -c. The omission of -v is unexpected. The change
349 history states that the description is derived from True64 UNIX. Ac‐
350 cording to its manual pages, that system also supported the -v option.
351 Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued. As of
353 2019, the surviving implementations of tic are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and So‐
354 laris), ncurses and NetBSD curses. The SVr4 tic programs all support
355 the -v option. The NetBSD tic program follows X/Open's documentation,
356 omitting the -v option.
357 The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic read ter‐
359 minal descriptions from the standard input if the file parameter is
360 omitted. None of these implementations do that. Further, it comments
361 that some may choose to read from ”./terminfo.src” but that is obsoles‐
362 cent behavior from SVr2, and is not (for example) a documented feature
363 of SVr3.
364 COMPATIBILITY
366 There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated de‐
367 scription fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
368 short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when descrip‐
369 tion fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous char‐
370 acters.
371 EXTENSIONS
373 Unlike the SVr4 tic command, this implementation can actually compile
374 termcap sources. In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can
375 be mixed in a single source file. See terminfo(5) for the list of
376 termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
377 The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for use ca‐
379 pabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets anywhere
380 in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at TERMINFO (if
381 TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo database (if it
382 exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of compiled
383 entries.
384 The error messages from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
386 messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
387 Aside from -c and -v, options are not portable:
389 • Most of tic's options are not supported by SVr4 tic:
391 -0 -1 -C -G -I -N -R -T -V -a -e -f -g -o -r -s -t -x
393 • The NetBSD tic supports a few of the ncurses options
395 -a -o -x
397 and adds -S (a feature which does the same thing as infocmp's -e
399 and -E options).
400 The SVr4 -c mode does not report bad “use=” links.
402 System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
404 $HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
405
407 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
408 Compiled terminal description database.
409
411 captoinfo(1M), infocmp(1M), infotocap(1M), toe(1M), curses(3X),
412 term(5). terminfo(5). user_caps(5).
413 This describes ncurses version 6.4 (patch 20230520).
415
417 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
418 Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
419 tic(1M)