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
15 library 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
19 entry). The tic command writes only one type of entry, depending on
20 how 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
46 directory $HOME/.terminfo (or hashed database $HOME/.terminfo.db);
47 if 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 OPTIONS
63 -0 restricts the output to a single line
64 -1 restricts the output to a single column
66 -a tells tic to retain commented-out capabilities rather than dis‐
68 carding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them with
69 a period. This sets the -x option, because it treats the com‐
70 mented-out entries as user-defined names. If the source is
71 termcap, accept the 2-character names required by version 6.
72 Otherwise these are ignored.
73 -C Force source translation to termcap format. Note: this differs
75 from the -C option of infocmp(1M) in that it does not merely
76 translate capability names, but also translates terminfo strings
77 to termcap format. Capabilities that are not translatable are
78 left in the entry under their terminfo names but commented out
79 with two preceding dots. The actual format used incorporates
80 some improvements for escaped characters from terminfo format.
81 For a stricter BSD-compatible translation, add the -K option.
82 If this is combined with -c, tic makes additional checks to
84 report cases where the terminfo values do not have an exact
85 equivalent in termcap form. For example:
86 · sgr usually will not convert, because termcap lacks the
88 ability to work with more than two parameters, and because
89 termcap lacks many of the arithmetic/logical operators used
90 in terminfo.
91 · capabilities with more than one delay or with delays before
93 the end of the string will not convert completely.
94 -c tells tic to only check file for errors, including syntax prob‐
96 lems and bad use-links. If you specify -C (-I) with this
97 option, the code will print warnings about entries which, after
98 use resolution, are more than 1023 (4096) bytes long. Due to a
99 fixed buffer length in older termcap libraries, as well as buggy
100 checking for the buffer length (and a documented limit in ter‐
101 minfo), these entries may cause core dumps with other implemen‐
102 tations.
103 tic checks string capabilities to ensure that those with parame‐
105 ters will be valid expressions. It does this check only for the
106 predefined string capabilities; those which are defined with the
107 -x option are ignored.
108 -D tells tic to print the database locations that it knows about,
110 and exit. The first location shown is the one to which it would
111 write compiled terminal descriptions. If tic is not able to
112 find a writable database location according to the rules summa‐
113 rized above, it will print a diagnostic and exit with an error
114 rather than printing a list of database locations.
115 -e names
117 Limit writes and translations to the following comma-separated
118 list of terminals. If any name or alias of a terminal matches
119 one of the names in the list, the entry will be written or
120 translated as normal. Otherwise no output will be generated for
121 it. The option value is interpreted as a file containing the
122 list if it contains a '/'. (Note: depending on how tic was com‐
123 piled, this option may require -I or -C.)
124 -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain
126 if/then/else/endif expressions indented for readability.
127 -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their
129 character equivalents.
130 -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
132 their decimal equivalents.
133 -I Force source translation to terminfo format.
135 -K Suppress some longstanding ncurses extensions to termcap format,
137 e.g., "\s" for space.
138 -L Force source translation to terminfo format using the long C
140 variable names listed in <term.h>
141 -N Disable smart defaults. Normally, when translating from termcap
143 to terminfo, the compiler makes a number of assumptions about
144 the defaults of string capabilities reset1_string, car‐
145 riage_return, cursor_left, cursor_down, scroll_forward, tab,
146 newline, key_backspace, key_left, and key_down, then attempts to
147 use obsolete termcap capabilities to deduce correct values. It
148 also normally suppresses output of obsolete termcap capabilities
149 such as bs. This option forces a more literal translation that
150 also preserves the obsolete capabilities.
151 -odir Write compiled entries to given database location. Overrides
153 the TERMINFO environment variable.
154 -Qn Rather than show source in terminfo (text) format, print the
156 compiled (binary) format in hexadecimal or base64 form, depend‐
157 ing on the option's value:
158 1 hexadecimal
160 2 base64
162 3 hexadecimal and base64
164 -q Suppress comments and blank lines when showing translated
166 source.
167 -Rsubset
169 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
170 archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or
171 HP/UX that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses ter‐
172 minfo; and outright broken ports like AIX 3.x that have their
173 own extensions incompatible with SVr4/XSI. Available subsets
174 are "SVr1", "Ultrix", "HP", "BSD" and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for
175 details.
176 -r Force entry resolution (so there are no remaining tc capabili‐
178 ties) even when doing translation to termcap format. This may
179 be needed if you are preparing a termcap file for a termcap
180 library (such as GNU termcap through version 1.3 or BSD termcap
181 through 4.3BSD) that does not handle multiple tc capabilities
182 per entry.
183 -s Summarize the compile by showing the database location into
185 which entries are written, and the number of entries which are
186 compiled.
187 -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
189 mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
190 descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter‐
191 minfo).
192 -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
194 translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabili‐
195 ties are commented-out.
196 -U tells tic to not post-process the data after parsing the source
198 file. Normally, it infers data which is commonly missing in older
199 terminfo data, or in termcaps.
200 -V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
202 exits.
203 -vn specifies that (verbose) output be written to standard error trace
205 information showing tic's progress.
206 The optional parameter n is a number from 1 to 10, inclusive,
208 indicating the desired level of detail of information. If ncurses
209 is built without tracing support, the optional parameter is
210 ignored. If n is omitted, the default level is 1. If n is speci‐
211 fied and greater than 1, the level of detail is increased.
212 The debug flag levels are as follows:
214 1 Names of files created and linked
216 2 Information related to the “use” facility
218 3 Statistics from the hashing algorithm
220 5 String-table memory allocations
222 7 Entries into the string-table
224 8 List of tokens encountered by scanner
226 9 All values computed in construction of the hash table
228 If the debug level n is not given, it is taken to be one.
230 -W By itself, the -w option will not force long strings to be
232 wrapped. Use the -W option to do this.
233 If you specify both -f and -W options, the latter is ignored when
235 -f has already split the line.
236 -wn specifies the width of the output. The parameter is optional. If
238 it is omitted, it defaults to 60.
239 -x Treat unknown capabilities as user-defined (see user_caps(5)).
241 That is, if you supply a capability name which tic does not recog‐
242 nize, it will infer its type (boolean, number or string) from the
243 syntax and make an extended table entry for that. User-defined
244 capability strings whose name begins with “k” are treated as func‐
245 tion keys.
246 PARAMETERS
248 file contains one or more terminfo terminal descriptions in source
249 format [see terminfo(5)]. Each description in the file
250 describes the capabilities of a particular terminal.
251 If file is “-”, then the data is read from the standard input.
253 The file parameter may also be the path of a character-device.
254 PROCESSING
256 All but one of the capabilities recognized by tic are documented in
257 terminfo(5). The exception is the use capability.
258 When a use=entry-name field is discovered in a terminal entry currently
260 being compiled, tic reads in the binary from /usr/share/terminfo to
261 complete the entry. (Entries created from file will be used first.
262 tic duplicates the capabilities in entry-name for the current entry,
263 with the exception of those capabilities that explicitly are defined in
264 the current entry.
265 When an entry, e.g., entry_name_1, contains a use=entry_name_2 field,
267 any canceled capabilities in entry_name_2 must also appear in
268 entry_name_1 before use= for these capabilities to be canceled in
269 entry_name_1.
270 Total compiled entries cannot exceed 4096 bytes. The name field cannot
272 exceed 512 bytes. Terminal names exceeding the maximum alias length
273 (32 characters on systems with long filenames, 14 characters otherwise)
274 will be truncated to the maximum alias length and a warning message
275 will be printed.
276
278 System V Release 2 provided a tic utility. It accepted a single
279 option: -v (optionally followed by a number). According to Ross
280 Ridge's comment in mytinfo, this version of tic was unable to represent
281 cancelled capabilities.
282 System V Release 3 provided a different tic utility, written by Pavel
284 Curtis, (originally named “compile” in pcurses). This added an option
285 -c to check the file for errors, with the caveat that errors in “use=”
286 links would not be reported. System V Release 3 documented a few warn‐
287 ing messages which did not appear in pcurses. While the program itself
288 was changed little as development continued with System V Release 4,
289 the table of capabilities grew from 180 (pcurses) to 464 (Solaris).
290 In early development of ncurses (1993), Zeyd Ben-Halim used the table
292 from mytinfo to extend the pcurses table to 469 capabilities (456
293 matched SVr4, 8 were only in SVr4, 13 were not in SVr4). Of those 13,
294 11 were ultimately discarded (perhaps to match the draft of X/Open
295 Curses). The exceptions were memory_lock_above and memory_unlock (see
296 user_caps(5)).
297 Eric Raymond incorporated parts of mytinfo into ncurses to implement
299 the termcap-to-terminfo source conversion, and extended that to begin
300 development of the corresponding terminfo-to-termcap source conversion,
301 Thomas Dickey completed that development over the course of several
302 years.
303 In 1999, Thomas Dickey added the -x option to support user-defined
305 capabilities.
306 In 2010, Roy Marples provided a tic program and terminfo library for
308 NetBSD. This implementation adapts several features from ncurses,
309 including tic's -x option.
310 The -c option tells tic to check for problems in the terminfo source
312 file. Continued development provides additional checks:
313 · pcurses had 8 warnings
315 · ncurses in 1996 had 16 warnings
317 · Solaris (SVr4) curses has 28 warnings
319 · NetBSD tic in 2019 has 19 warnings.
321 · ncurses in 2019 has 96 warnings
323 The checking done in ncurses' tic helps with the conversion to termcap,
325 as well as pointing out errors and inconsistencies. It is also used to
326 ensure consistency with the user-defined capabilities. There are 527
327 distinct capabilities in ncurses' terminal database; 128 of those are
328 user-defined.
329
331 X/Open Curses, Issue 7 (2009) provides a brief description of tic. It
332 lists one option: -c. The omission of -v is unexpected. The change
333 history states that the description is derived from True64 UNIX.
334 According to its manual pages, that system also supported the -v
335 option.
336 Shortly after Issue 7 was released, Tru64 was discontinued. As of
338 2019, the surviving implementations of tic are SVr4 (AIX, HP-UX and
339 Solaris), ncurses and NetBSD curses.
340 The X/Open rationale states that some implementations of tic read ter‐
342 minal descriptions from the standard input if the file parameter is
343 omitted. None of these implementations do that. Further, it comments
344 that some may choose to read from ”./terminfo.src” but that is obsoles‐
345 cent behavior from SVr2, and is not (for example) a documented feature
346 of SVr3.
347 COMPATIBILITY
349 There is some evidence that historic tic implementations treated
350 description fields with no whitespace in them as additional aliases or
351 short names. This tic does not do that, but it does warn when descrip‐
352 tion fields may be treated that way and check them for dangerous char‐
353 acters.
354 EXTENSIONS
356 Unlike the SVr4 tic command, this implementation can actually compile
357 termcap sources. In fact, entries in terminfo and termcap syntax can
358 be mixed in a single source file. See terminfo(5) for the list of
359 termcap names taken to be equivalent to terminfo names.
360 The SVr4 manual pages are not clear on the resolution rules for use
362 capabilities. This implementation of tic will find use targets any‐
363 where in the source file, or anywhere in the file tree rooted at TER‐
364 MINFO (if TERMINFO is defined), or in the user's $HOME/.terminfo data‐
365 base (if it exists), or (finally) anywhere in the system's file tree of
366 compiled entries.
367 The error messages from this tic have the same format as GNU C error
369 messages, and can be parsed by GNU Emacs's compile facility.
370 The -0, -1, -C, -G, -I, -N, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -o, -r, -s, -t
372 and -x options are not supported under SVr4. The SVr4 -c mode does not
373 report bad “use=” links.
374 System V does not compile entries to or read entries from your
376 $HOME/.terminfo database unless TERMINFO is explicitly set to it.
377
379 /usr/share/terminfo/?/*
380 Compiled terminal description database.
381
383 infocmp(1M), captoinfo(1M), infotocap(1M), toe(1M), curses(3X),
384 term(5). terminfo(5). user_caps(5).
385 This describes ncurses version 6.1 (patch 20190803).
387
389 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
390 Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
391 tic(1M)