1tset(1)                     General Commands Manual                    tset(1)
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NAME

6       tset, reset - terminal initialization
7

SYNOPSIS

9       tset [-IQVcqrsw] [-] [-e ch] [-i ch] [-k ch] [-m mapping] [terminal]
10       reset [-IQVcqrsw] [-] [-e ch] [-i ch] [-k ch] [-m mapping] [terminal]
11

DESCRIPTION

13   tset - initialization
14       This program initializes terminals.
15
16       First,  tset retrieves the current terminal mode settings for your ter‐
17       minal.  It does this by successively testing
18
19       ·   the standard error,
20
21       ·   standard output,
22
23       ·   standard input and
24
25       ·   ultimately “/dev/tty”
26
27       to obtain terminal settings.  Having  retrieved  these  settings,  tset
28       remembers which file descriptor to use when updating settings.
29
30       Next,  tset  determines  the type of terminal that you are using.  This
31       determination is done as follows, using the first terminal type found.
32
33       1. The terminal argument specified on the command line.
34
35       2. The value of the TERM environmental variable.
36
37       3. (BSD systems only.) The terminal type associated with  the  standard
38       error  output  device  in the /etc/ttys file.  (On System-V-like UNIXes
39       and systems using that convention, getty does this job by setting  TERM
40       according to the type passed to it by /etc/inittab.)
41
42       4. The default terminal type, “unknown”.
43
44       If  the  terminal  type  was  not specified on the command-line, the -m
45       option mappings are then applied (see the section TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING
46       for  more information).  Then, if the terminal type begins with a ques‐
47       tion mark (“?”), the user is prompted for confirmation of the  terminal
48       type.   An  empty  response  confirms the type, or, another type can be
49       entered to specify a new type.  Once the terminal type has been  deter‐
50       mined,  the  terminal description for the terminal is retrieved.  If no
51       terminal description is found for the type, the user  is  prompted  for
52       another terminal type.
53
54       Once the terminal description is retrieved,
55
56       ·   if  the “-w” option is enabled, tset may update the terminal's win‐
57           dow size.
58
59           If the window size cannot be obtained from  the  operating  system,
60           but  the terminal description (or environment, e.g., LINES and COL‐
61           UMNS variables specify this), use this to set  the  operating  sys‐
62           tem's notion of the window size.
63
64       ·   if  the  “-c”  option is enabled, the backspace, interrupt and line
65           kill characters (among many other things) are set
66
67       ·   unless the “-I” option is enabled, the terminal and tab initializa‐
68           tion  strings are sent to the standard error output, and tset waits
69           one second (in case a hardware reset was issued).
70
71       ·   Finally, if the erase, interrupt  and  line  kill  characters  have
72           changed,  or  are not set to their default values, their values are
73           displayed to the standard error output.
74
75   reset - reinitialization
76       When invoked as reset, tset sets the terminal modes to “sane” values:
77
78       ·   sets cooked and echo modes,
79
80       ·   turns off cbreak and raw modes,
81
82       ·   turns on newline translation and
83
84       ·   resets any unset special characters to their default values
85
86       before doing the terminal initialization described above.  Also, rather
87       than  using  the  terminal initialization strings, it uses the terminal
88       reset strings.
89
90       The reset command is useful after a program dies leaving a terminal  in
91       an abnormal state:
92
93       ·   you may have to type
94
95               <LF>reset<LF>
96
97           (the line-feed character is normally control-J) to get the terminal
98           to work, as carriage-return may no  longer  work  in  the  abnormal
99           state.
100
101       ·   Also, the terminal will often not echo the command.
102

OPTIONS

104       The options are as follows:
105
106       -c   Set control characters and modes.
107
108       -e   Set the erase character to ch.
109
110       -I   Do not send the terminal or tab initialization strings to the ter‐
111            minal.
112
113       -i   Set the interrupt character to ch.
114
115       -k   Set the line kill character to ch.
116
117       -m   Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal.  See the section
118            TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING for more information.
119
120       -Q   Do  not  display any values for the erase, interrupt and line kill
121            characters.  Normally tset displays the values for control charac‐
122            ters which differ from the system's default values.
123
124       -q   The  terminal  type  is  displayed to the standard output, and the
125            terminal is not initialized in any way.  The option “-” by  itself
126            is equivalent but archaic.
127
128       -r   Print the terminal type to the standard error output.
129
130       -s   Print the sequence of shell commands to initialize the environment
131            variable TERM to the standard output.  See the section SETTING THE
132            ENVIRONMENT for details.
133
134       -V   reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
135            exits.
136
137       -w   Resize the window to match the  size  deduced  via  setupterm(3X).
138            Normally  this  has  no  effect,  unless  setupterm is not able to
139            detect the window size.
140
141       The arguments for the -e, -i, and -k options may either be  entered  as
142       actual  characters  or by using the “hat” notation, i.e., control-h may
143       be specified as “^H” or “^h”.
144
145       If neither -c or -w is given, both options are assumed.
146

SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT

148       It is often desirable to enter the terminal type and information  about
149       the terminal's capabilities into the shell's environment.  This is done
150       using the -s option.
151
152       When the -s option is specified, the commands to enter the  information
153       into  the  shell's  environment are written to the standard output.  If
154       the SHELL environmental variable ends in “csh”, the  commands  are  for
155       csh,  otherwise, they are for sh.  Note, the csh commands set and unset
156       the shell variable noglob, leaving it unset.  The following line in the
157       .login or .profile files will initialize the environment correctly:
158
159           eval `tset -s options ... `
160

TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING

162       When the terminal is not hardwired into the system (or the current sys‐
163       tem information is  incorrect)  the  terminal  type  derived  from  the
164       /etc/ttys  file  or  the TERM environmental variable is often something
165       generic like network, dialup, or unknown.   When  tset  is  used  in  a
166       startup  script  it is often desirable to provide information about the
167       type of terminal used on such ports.
168
169       The -m options maps from some set of conditions  to  a  terminal  type,
170       that is, to tell tset “If I'm on this port at a particular speed, guess
171       that I'm on that kind of terminal”.
172
173       The argument to the -m option consists of an  optional  port  type,  an
174       optional  operator,  an  optional  baud rate specification, an optional
175       colon (“:”) character and a terminal type.  The port type is  a  string
176       (delimited  by either the operator or the colon character).  The opera‐
177       tor may be any combination of “>”, “<”, “@”, and “!”; “>” means greater
178       than, “<” means less than, “@” means equal to and “!” inverts the sense
179       of the test.  The baud rate is specified as a number  and  is  compared
180       with  the  speed of the standard error output (which should be the con‐
181       trol terminal).  The terminal type is a string.
182
183       If the terminal type is not specified on the command line, the -m  map‐
184       pings are applied to the terminal type.  If the port type and baud rate
185       match the mapping, the terminal type specified in the mapping  replaces
186       the  current  type.   If  more than one mapping is specified, the first
187       applicable mapping is used.
188
189       For example, consider the following  mapping:  dialup>9600:vt100.   The
190       port type is dialup , the operator is >, the baud rate specification is
191       9600, and the terminal type is vt100.  The result of this mapping is to
192       specify  that  if  the  terminal  type  is dialup, and the baud rate is
193       greater than 9600 baud, a terminal type of vt100 will be used.
194
195       If no baud rate is specified, the terminal type  will  match  any  baud
196       rate.   If  no port type is specified, the terminal type will match any
197       port type.  For example, -m dialup:vt100  -m  :?xterm  will  cause  any
198       dialup port, regardless of baud rate, to match the terminal type vt100,
199       and any non-dialup port type to match the terminal type ?xterm.   Note,
200       because  of  the  leading  question mark, the user will be queried on a
201       default port as to whether they are actually using an xterm terminal.
202
203       No whitespace characters are  permitted  in  the  -m  option  argument.
204       Also,  to avoid problems with meta-characters, it is suggested that the
205       entire -m option argument be placed within single quote characters, and
206       that  csh  users insert a backslash character (“\”) before any exclama‐
207       tion marks (“!”).
208

HISTORY

210       A reset command appeared in 2BSD (April 1979), written by Kurt  Shoens.
211       This  program set the erase and kill characters to ^H (backspace) and @
212       respectively.  Mark Horton improved that in 3BSD (October 1979), adding
213       intr,  quit, start/stop and eof characters as well as changing the pro‐
214       gram to avoid modifying any user settings.
215
216       Later in 4.1BSD (December 1980), Mark Horton added a call to  the  tset
217       program  using  the  -I and -Q options, i.e., using that to improve the
218       terminal modes.  With those options, that version of reset did not  use
219       the termcap database.
220
221       A separate tset command was provided in 2BSD by Eric Allman.  While the
222       oldest published source (from 1979) provides both tset and reset,  All‐
223       man's  comments  in the 2BSD source code indicate that he began work in
224       October 1977, continuing development over the next few years.
225
226       In September 1980, Eric Allman modified tset, adding the code from  the
227       existing  “reset”  feature when tset was invoked as reset.  Rather than
228       simply copying the existing program, in this merged version, tset  used
229       the  termcap database to do additional (re)initialization of the termi‐
230       nal.  This version appeared in 4.1cBSD, late in 1982.
231
232       Other developers (e.g., Keith Bostic and Jim Bloom) continued to modify
233       tset until 4.4BSD was released in 1993.
234
235       The  ncurses implementation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD sources
236       for a terminfo environment by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>.
237

COMPATIBILITY

239       Neither IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open  Group  Base  Specifications  Issue  7
240       (POSIX.1-2008) nor X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents tset or reset.
241
242       The  AT&T  tput utility (AIX, HPUX, Solaris) incorporated the terminal-
243       mode manipulation as well as termcap-based features such  as  resetting
244       tabstops from tset in BSD (4.1c), presumably with the intention of mak‐
245       ing tset obsolete.  However, each of those systems still provides tset.
246       In fact, the commonly-used reset utility is always an alias for tset.
247
248       The  tset utility provides for backward-compatibility with BSD environ‐
249       ments (under most modern UNIXes, /etc/inittab and getty(1) can set TERM
250       appropriately for each dial-up line; this obviates what was tset's most
251       important use).  This implementation behaves like 4.4BSD tset,  with  a
252       few exceptions specified here.
253
254       A  few  options are different because the TERMCAP variable is no longer
255       supported under terminfo-based ncurses:
256
257       ·   The -S option of BSD tset no longer works; it prints an error  mes‐
258           sage to the standard error and dies.
259
260       ·   The -s option only sets TERM, not TERMCAP.
261
262       There  was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking tset via a link
263       named “TSET” (or via any other name beginning with an  upper-case  let‐
264       ter)  set  the  terminal to use upper-case only.  This feature has been
265       omitted.
266
267       The -A, -E, -h, -u and -v options were deleted from the tset utility in
268       4.4BSD.   None of them were documented in 4.3BSD and all are of limited
269       utility at best.  The -a, -d, and -p options are  similarly  not  docu‐
270       mented  or useful, but were retained as they appear to be in widespread
271       use.  It is strongly recommended that any usage of these three  options
272       be  changed  to  use the -m option instead.  The -a, -d, and -p options
273       are therefore omitted from the usage summary above.
274
275       Very old systems, e.g., 3BSD, used a different  terminal  driver  which
276       was  replaced  in  4BSD in the early 1980s.  To accommodate these older
277       systems, the 4BSD tset provided a -n option to  specify  that  the  new
278       terminal  driver  should be used.  This implementation does not provide
279       that choice.
280
281       It is still permissible to specify the -e, -i, and -k  options  without
282       arguments, although it is strongly recommended that such usage be fixed
283       to explicitly specify the character.
284
285       As of 4.4BSD, executing tset as reset no longer implies the -Q  option.
286       Also, the interaction between the - option and the terminal argument in
287       some historic implementations of tset has been removed.
288
289       The -c and -w options are not found in earlier  implementations.   How‐
290       ever, a different window size-change feature was provided in 4.4BSD.
291
292       ·   In  4.4BSD,  tset uses the window size from the termcap description
293           to set the window size if tset is not able  to  obtain  the  window
294           size from the operating system.
295
296       ·   In ncurses, tset obtains the window size using setupterm, which may
297           be from the operating system, the  LINES  and  COLUMNS  environment
298           variables or the terminal description.
299
300       Obtaining  the  window  size from the terminal description is common to
301       both implementations, but considered obsolescent.  Its  only  practical
302       use is for hardware terminals.  Generally speaking, a window size would
303       be unset only if there were some problem obtaining the value  from  the
304       operating  system  (and  setupterm would still fail).  For that reason,
305       the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables may be useful  for  working
306       around  window-size problems.  Those have the drawback that if the win‐
307       dow is resized, those variables must be recomputed and reassigned.   To
308       do this more easily, use the resize(1) program.
309

ENVIRONMENT

311       The tset command uses these environment variables:
312
313       SHELL
314            tells tset whether to initialize TERM using sh or csh syntax.
315
316       TERM Denotes  your  terminal  type.   Each  terminal  type is distinct,
317            though many are similar.
318
319       TERMCAP
320            may denote the location of a termcap database.  If it  is  not  an
321            absolute pathname, e.g., begins with a “/”, tset removes the vari‐
322            able from the environment before looking for the terminal descrip‐
323            tion.
324

FILES

326       /etc/ttys
327            system  port  name to terminal type mapping database (BSD versions
328            only).
329
330       /usr/share/terminfo
331            terminal capability database
332

SEE ALSO

334       csh(1),  sh(1),  stty(1),   curs_terminfo(3X),   tty(4),   terminfo(5),
335       ttys(5), environ(7)
336
337       This describes ncurses version 6.1 (patch 20191109).
338
339
340
341                                                                       tset(1)
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