1infocmp(1M) infocmp(1M)
2
6 infocmp - compare or print out terminfo descriptions
7
9 infocmp [-1CDEFGIKLTUVcdegilnpqrtux]
10 [-v n] [-s d| i| l| c] [-R subset]
11 [-w width] [-A directory] [-B directory]
12 [termname...]
13
15 infocmp can be used to compare a binary terminfo entry with other ter‐
16 minfo entries, rewrite a terminfo description to take advantage of the
17 use= terminfo field, or print out a terminfo description from the
18 binary file (term) in a variety of formats. In all cases, the boolean
19 fields will be printed first, followed by the numeric fields, followed
20 by the string fields.
21 Default Options
23 If no options are specified and zero or one termnames are specified,
24 the -I option will be assumed. If more than one termname is specified,
25 the -d option will be assumed.
26 Comparison Options [-d] [-c] [-n]
28 infocmp compares the terminfo description of the first terminal
29 termname with each of the descriptions given by the entries for the
30 other terminal's termnames. If a capability is defined for only one of
31 the terminals, the value returned will depend on the type of the capa‐
32 bility: F for boolean variables, -1 for integer variables, and NULL for
33 string variables.
34 The -d option produces a list of each capability that is different
36 between two entries. This option is useful to show the difference
37 between two entries, created by different people, for the same or simi‐
38 lar terminals.
39 The -c option produces a list of each capability that is common between
41 two or more entries. Capabilities that are not set are ignored. This
42 option can be used as a quick check to see if the -u option is worth
43 using.
44 The -n option produces a list of each capability that is in none of the
46 given entries. If no termnames are given, the environment variable
47 TERM will be used for both of the termnames. This can be used as a
48 quick check to see if anything was left out of a description.
49 Source Listing Options [-I] [-L] [-C] [-r]
51 The -I, -L, and -C options will produce a source listing for each ter‐
52 minal named.
53 -I use the terminfo names
55 -L use the long C variable name listed in <term.h>
56 -C use the termcap names
57 -r when using -C, put out all capabilities in termcap form
58 -K modifies the -C option, improving BSD-compatibility.
59 If no termnames are given, the environment variable TERM will be used
61 for the terminal name.
62 The source produced by the -C option may be used directly as a termcap
64 entry, but not all parameterized strings can be changed to the termcap
65 format. infocmp will attempt to convert most of the parameterized
66 information, and anything not converted will be plainly marked in the
67 output and commented out. These should be edited by hand.
68 For best results when converting to termcap format, you should use both
70 -C and -r. Normally a termcap description is limited to 1023 bytes.
71 infocmp trims away less essential parts to make it fit. If you are
72 converting to one of the (rare) termcap implementations which accept an
73 unlimited size of termcap, you may want to add the -T option. More
74 often however, you must help the termcap implementation, and trim
75 excess whitespace (use the -0 option for that).
76 All padding information for strings will be collected together and
78 placed at the beginning of the string where termcap expects it. Manda‐
79 tory padding (padding information with a trailing '/') will become
80 optional.
81 All termcap variables no longer supported by terminfo, but which are
83 derivable from other terminfo variables, will be output. Not all ter‐
84 minfo capabilities will be translated; only those variables which were
85 part of termcap will normally be output. Specifying the -r option will
86 take off this restriction, allowing all capabilities to be output in
87 termcap form. Normally you would use both the -C and -r options. The
88 actual format used incorporates some improvements for escaped charac‐
89 ters from terminfo format. For a stricter BSD-compatible translation,
90 use the -K option rather than -C.
91 Note that because padding is collected to the beginning of the capabil‐
93 ity, not all capabilities are output. Mandatory padding is not sup‐
94 ported. Because termcap strings are not as flexible, it is not always
95 possible to convert a terminfo string capability into an equivalent
96 termcap format. A subsequent conversion of the termcap file back into
97 terminfo format will not necessarily reproduce the original terminfo
98 source.
99 Some common terminfo parameter sequences, their termcap equivalents,
101 and some terminal types which commonly have such sequences, are:
102 terminfo termcap Representative Terminals
104 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
105 %p1%c %. adm
106 %p1%d %d hp, ANSI standard, vt100
107 %p1%'x'%+%c %+x concept
108 %i %iq ANSI standard, vt100
109 %p1%?%'x'%>%t%p1%'y'%+%; %>xy concept
110 %p2 is printed before %p1 %r hp
111 Use= Option [-u]
113 The -u option produces a terminfo source description of the first ter‐
114 minal termname which is relative to the sum of the descriptions given
115 by the entries for the other terminals termnames. It does this by ana‐
116 lyzing the differences between the first termname and the other
117 termnames and producing a description with use= fields for the other
118 terminals. In this manner, it is possible to retrofit generic terminfo
119 entries into a terminal's description. Or, if two similar terminals
120 exist, but were coded at different times or by different people so that
121 each description is a full description, using infocmp will show what
122 can be done to change one description to be relative to the other.
123 A capability will get printed with an at-sign (@) if it no longer
125 exists in the first termname, but one of the other termname entries
126 contains a value for it. A capability's value gets printed if the
127 value in the first termname is not found in any of the other termname
128 entries, or if the first of the other termname entries that has this
129 capability gives a different value for the capability than that in the
130 first termname.
131 The order of the other termname entries is significant. Since the ter‐
133 minfo compiler tic does a left-to-right scan of the capabilities, spec‐
134 ifying two use= entries that contain differing entries for the same
135 capabilities will produce different results depending on the order that
136 the entries are given in. infocmp will flag any such inconsistencies
137 between the other termname entries as they are found.
138 Alternatively, specifying a capability after a use= entry that contains
140 that capability will cause the second specification to be ignored.
141 Using infocmp to recreate a description can be a useful check to make
142 sure that everything was specified correctly in the original source
143 description.
144 Another error that does not cause incorrect compiled files, but will
146 slow down the compilation time, is specifying extra use= fields that
147 are superfluous. infocmp will flag any other termname use= fields that
148 were not needed.
149 Changing Databases [-A directory] [-B directory]
151 Like other ncurses utilities, infocmp looks for the terminal descrip‐
152 tions in several places. You can use the TERMINFO and TERMINFO_DIRS
153 environment variables to override the compiled-in default list of
154 places to search (see curses(3X) for details).
155 You can also use the options -A and -B to override the list of places
157 to search when comparing terminal descriptions:
158 · The -A option sets the location for the first termname
160 · The -B option sets the location for the other termnames.
162 Using these options, it is possible to compare descriptions for a ter‐
164 minal with the same name located in two different databases. For
165 instance, you can use this feature for comparing descriptions for the
166 same terminal created by different people.
167 Other Options
169 -0 causes the fields to be printed on one line, without wrapping.
170 -1 causes the fields to be printed out one to a line. Otherwise, the
172 fields will be printed several to a line to a maximum width of 60
173 characters.
174 -a tells infocmp to retain commented-out capabilities rather than
176 discarding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them
177 with a period.
178 -D tells infocmp to print the database locations that it knows about,
180 and exit.
181 -E Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as tables, needed in
183 the C initializer for a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capabil‐
184 ity structure in the <term.h>). This option is useful for prepar‐
185 ing versions of the curses library hardwired for a given terminal
186 type. The tables are all declared static, and are named according
187 to the type and the name of the corresponding terminal entry.
188 Before ncurses 5.0, the split between the -e and -E options was
190 not needed; but support for extended names required making the
191 arrays of terminal capabilities separate from the TERMTYPE struc‐
192 ture.
193 -e Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as a C initializer for
195 a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capability structure in the
196 <term.h>). This option is useful for preparing versions of the
197 curses library hardwired for a given terminal type.
198 -F compare terminfo files. This assumes that two following arguments
200 are filenames. The files are searched for pairwise matches
201 between entries, with two entries considered to match if any of
202 their names do. The report printed to standard output lists
203 entries with no matches in the other file, and entries with more
204 than one match. For entries with exactly one match it includes a
205 difference report. Normally, to reduce the volume of the report,
206 use references are not resolved before looking for differences,
207 but resolution can be forced by also specifying -r.
208 -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/endif
210 expressions indented for readability.
211 -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their char‐
213 acter equivalents.
214 -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
216 their decimal equivalents.
217 -i Analyze the initialization (is1, is2, is3), and reset (rs1, rs2,
219 rs3), strings in the entry. For each string, the code tries to
220 analyze it into actions in terms of the other capabilities in the
221 entry, certain X3.64/ISO 6429/ECMA-48 capabilities, and certain
222 DEC VT-series private modes (the set of recognized special
223 sequences has been selected for completeness over the existing
224 terminfo database). Each report line consists of the capability
225 name, followed by a colon and space, followed by a printable
226 expansion of the capability string with sections matching recog‐
227 nized actions translated into {}-bracketed descriptions. Here is
228 a list of the DEC/ANSI special sequences recognized: i.
229 Action Meaning
231 ─────────────────────────────────────────
232 RIS full reset
233 SC save cursor
234 RC restore cursor
235 LL home-down
236 RSR reset scroll region
237 ─────────────────────────────────────────
238 DECSTR soft reset (VT320)
239 S7C1T 7-bit controls (VT220)
240 ─────────────────────────────────────────
241 ISO DEC G0 enable DEC graphics for G0
242 ISO UK G0 enable UK chars for G0
243 ISO US G0 enable US chars for G0
244 ISO DEC G1 enable DEC graphics for G1
245 ISO UK G1 enable UK chars for G1
246 ISO US G1 enable US chars for G1
247 ─────────────────────────────────────────
248 DECPAM application keypad mode
249 DECPNM normal keypad mode
250 DECANSI enter ANSI mode
251 ─────────────────────────────────────────
252 ECMA[+-]AM keyboard action mode
253 ECMA[+-]IRM insert replace mode
254 ECMA[+-]SRM send receive mode
255 ECMA[+-]LNM linefeed mode
256 ─────────────────────────────────────────
257 DEC[+-]CKM application cursor keys
258 DEC[+-]ANM set VT52 mode
259 DEC[+-]COLM 132-column mode
260 DEC[+-]SCLM smooth scroll
261 DEC[+-]SCNM reverse video mode
262 DEC[+-]OM origin mode
263 DEC[+-]AWM wraparound mode
264 DEC[+-]ARM auto-repeat mode
266 It also recognizes a SGR action corresponding to ANSI/ISO
268 6429/ECMA Set Graphics Rendition, with the values NORMAL, BOLD,
269 UNDERLINE, BLINK, and REVERSE. All but NORMAL may be prefixed
270 with `+' (turn on) or `-' (turn off).
271 An SGR0 designates an empty highlight sequence (equivalent to {SGR:NOR‐
273 MAL}).
274 -l Set output format to terminfo.
276 -p Ignore padding specifications when comparing strings.
278 -q Make the comparison listing shorter by omitting subheadings, and
280 using "-" for absent capabilities, "@" for canceled rather than
281 "NULL".
282 -Rsubset
284 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
285 archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX
286 that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and
287 variants such as AIX that have their own extensions incompatible
288 with SVr4/XSI. Available terminfo subsets are "SVr1", "Ultrix",
289 "HP", and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for details. You can also choose
290 the subset "BSD" which selects only capabilities with termcap
291 equivalents recognized by 4.4BSD.
292 -s [d|i|l|c]
294 The -s option sorts the fields within each type according to the
295 argument below:
296 d leave fields in the order that they are stored in the ter‐
298 minfo database.
299 i sort by terminfo name.
301 l sort by the long C variable name.
303 c sort by the termcap name.
305 If the -s option is not given, the fields printed out will be
307 sorted alphabetically by the terminfo name within each type,
308 except in the case of the -C or the -L options, which cause the
309 sorting to be done by the termcap name or the long C variable
310 name, respectively.
311 -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
313 mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
314 descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter‐
315 minfo).
316 -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
318 translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabilities
319 are commented-out.
320 -U tells infocmp to not post-process the data after parsing the
322 source file. This feature helps when comparing the actual con‐
323 tents of two source files, since it excludes the inferences that
324 infocmp makes to fill in missing data.
325 -V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
327 exits.
328 -v n prints out tracing information on standard error as the program
330 runs. Higher values of n induce greater verbosity.
331 -w width
333 changes the output to width characters.
334 -x print information for user-defined capabilities. These are exten‐
336 sions to the terminfo repertoire which can be loaded using the -x
337 option of tic.
338
340 /usr/share/terminfo Compiled terminal description database.
341
343 The -0, -1, -E, -F, -G, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -i, -l, -p, -q and
344 -t options are not supported in SVr4 curses.
345 The -r option's notion of `termcap' capabilities is System V Release
347 4's. Actual BSD curses versions will have a more restricted set. To
348 see only the 4.4BSD set, use -r -RBSD.
349
351 The -F option of infocmp(1M) should be a toe(1M) mode.
352
354 captoinfo(1M), infotocap(1M), tic(1M), toe(1M), curses(3X), ter‐
355 minfo(5).
356 http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/tctest.html
358 This describes ncurses version 5.9 (patch 20130511).
360
362 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
363 Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
364 infocmp(1M)