1infocmp(1M) infocmp(1M)
2
6 infocmp - compare or print out terminfo descriptions
7
9 infocmp [-1CEFGILTUVcdegilnpqrtux]
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 entries. Capabilities that are not set are ignored. This option
42 can be used as a quick check to see if the -u option is worth using.
43 The -n option produces a list of each capability that is in neither
45 entry. If no termnames are given, the environment variable TERM will
46 be used for both of the termnames. This can be used as a quick check
47 to see if anything was left out of a description.
48 Source Listing Options [-I] [-L] [-C] [-r]
50 The -I, -L, and -C options will produce a source listing for each ter‐
51 minal named.
52 -I use the terminfo names
54 -L use the long C variable name listed in <term.h>
55 -C use the termcap names
56 -r when using -C, put out all capabilities in termcap form
57 If no termnames are given, the environment variable TERM will be used
59 for the terminal name.
60 The source produced by the -C option may be used directly as a termcap
62 entry, but not all parameterized strings can be changed to the termcap
63 format. infocmp will attempt to convert most of the parameterized
64 information, and anything not converted will be plainly marked in the
65 output and commented out. These should be edited by hand.
66 All padding information for strings will be collected together and
68 placed at the beginning of the string where termcap expects it. Manda‐
69 tory padding (padding information with a trailing '/') will become
70 optional.
71 All termcap variables no longer supported by terminfo, but which are
73 derivable from other terminfo variables, will be output. Not all ter‐
74 minfo capabilities will be translated; only those variables which were
75 part of termcap will normally be output. Specifying the -r option will
76 take off this restriction, allowing all capabilities to be output in
77 termcap form.
78 Note that because padding is collected to the beginning of the capabil‐
80 ity, not all capabilities are output. Mandatory padding is not sup‐
81 ported. Because termcap strings are not as flexible, it is not always
82 possible to convert a terminfo string capability into an equivalent
83 termcap format. A subsequent conversion of the termcap file back into
84 terminfo format will not necessarily reproduce the original terminfo
85 source.
86 Some common terminfo parameter sequences, their termcap equivalents,
88 and some terminal types which commonly have such sequences, are:
89 terminfo termcap Representative Terminals
91 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
92 %p1%c %. adm
93 %p1%d %d hp, ANSI standard, vt100
94 %p1%'x'%+%c %+x concept
95 %i %iq ANSI standard, vt100
96 %p1%?%'x'%>%t%p1%'y'%+%; %>xy concept
97 %p2 is printed before %p1 %r hp
98 Use= Option [-u]
100 The -u option produces a terminfo source description of the first ter‐
101 minal termname which is relative to the sum of the descriptions given
102 by the entries for the other terminals termnames. It does this by ana‐
103 lyzing the differences between the first termname and the other
104 termnames and producing a description with use= fields for the other
105 terminals. In this manner, it is possible to retrofit generic terminfo
106 entries into a terminal's description. Or, if two similar terminals
107 exist, but were coded at different times or by different people so that
108 each description is a full description, using infocmp will show what
109 can be done to change one description to be relative to the other.
110 A capability will get printed with an at-sign (@) if it no longer
112 exists in the first termname, but one of the other termname entries
113 contains a value for it. A capability's value gets printed if the
114 value in the first termname is not found in any of the other termname
115 entries, or if the first of the other termname entries that has this
116 capability gives a different value for the capability than that in the
117 first termname.
118 The order of the other termname entries is significant. Since the ter‐
120 minfo compiler tic does a left-to-right scan of the capabilities, spec‐
121 ifying two use= entries that contain differing entries for the same
122 capabilities will produce different results depending on the order that
123 the entries are given in. infocmp will flag any such inconsistencies
124 between the other termname entries as they are found.
125 Alternatively, specifying a capability after a use= entry that contains
127 that capability will cause the second specification to be ignored.
128 Using infocmp to recreate a description can be a useful check to make
129 sure that everything was specified correctly in the original source
130 description.
131 Another error that does not cause incorrect compiled files, but will
133 slow down the compilation time, is specifying extra use= fields that
134 are superfluous. infocmp will flag any other termname use= fields that
135 were not needed.
136 Changing Databases [-A directory] [-B directory]
138 The location of the compiled terminfo database is taken from the envi‐
139 ronment variable TERMINFO . If the variable is not defined, or the
140 terminal is not found in that location, the system terminfo database,
141 in /usr/share/terminfo, will be used. The options -A and -B may be
142 used to override this location. The -A option will set TERMINFO for
143 the first termname and the -B option will set TERMINFO for the other
144 termnames. With this, it is possible to compare descriptions for a
145 terminal with the same name located in two different databases. This
146 is useful for comparing descriptions for the same terminal created by
147 different people.
148 Other Options
150 -1 causes the fields to be printed out one to a line. Otherwise, the
151 fields will be printed several to a line to a maximum width of 60
152 characters.
153 -a tells infocmp to retain commented-out capabilities rather than
155 discarding them. Capabilities are commented by prefixing them
156 with a period.
157 -E Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as tables, needed in
159 the C initializer for a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capabil‐
160 ity structure in the <term.h>). This option is useful for prepar‐
161 ing versions of the curses library hardwired for a given terminal
162 type. The tables are all declared static, and are named according
163 to the type and the name of the corresponding terminal entry.
164 Before ncurses 5.0, the split between the -e and -E options was
166 not needed; but support for extended names required making the
167 arrays of terminal capabilities separate from the TERMTYPE struc‐
168 ture.
169 -e Dump the capabilities of the given terminal as a C initializer for
171 a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal capability structure in the
172 <term.h>). This option is useful for preparing versions of the
173 curses library hardwired for a given terminal type.
174 -F compare terminfo files. This assumes that two following arguments
176 are filenames. The files are searched for pairwise matches
177 between entries, with two entries considered to match if any of
178 their names do. The report printed to standard output lists
179 entries with no matches in the other file, and entries with more
180 than one match. For entries with exactly one match it includes a
181 difference report. Normally, to reduce the volume of the report,
182 use references are not resolved before looking for differences,
183 but resolution can be forced by also specifying -r.
184 -f Display complex terminfo strings which contain if/then/else/endif
186 expressions indented for readability.
187 -G Display constant literals in decimal form rather than their char‐
189 acter equivalents.
190 -g Display constant character literals in quoted form rather than
192 their decimal equivalents.
193 -i Analyze the initialization (is1, is2, is3), and reset (rs1, rs2,
195 rs3), strings in the entry. For each string, the code tries to
196 analyze it into actions in terms of the other capabilities in the
197 entry, certain X3.64/ISO 6429/ECMA-48 capabilities, and certain
198 DEC VT-series private modes (the set of recognized special
199 sequences has been selected for completeness over the existing
200 terminfo database). Each report line consists of the capability
201 name, followed by a colon and space, followed by a printable
202 expansion of the capability string with sections matching recog‐
203 nized actions translated into {}-bracketed descriptions. Here is
204 a list of the DEC/ANSI special sequences recognized: i.
205 Action Meaning
207 ─────────────────────────────────────────
208 RIS full reset
209 SC save cursor
210 RC restore cursor
211 LL home-down
212 RSR reset scroll region
213 ─────────────────────────────────────────
214 DECSTR soft reset (VT320)
215 S7C1T 7-bit controls (VT220)
216 ─────────────────────────────────────────
217 ISO DEC G0 enable DEC graphics for G0
218 ISO UK G0 enable UK chars for G0
219 ISO US G0 enable US chars for G0
220 ISO DEC G1 enable DEC graphics for G1
221 ISO UK G1 enable UK chars for G1
222 ISO US G1 enable US chars for G1
223 ─────────────────────────────────────────
224 DECPAM application keypad mode
225 DECPNM normal keypad mode
226 DECANSI enter ANSI mode
227 ─────────────────────────────────────────
228 ECMA[+-]AM keyboard action mode
229 ECMA[+-]IRM insert replace mode
230 ECMA[+-]SRM send receive mode
231 ECMA[+-]LNM linefeed mode
232 ─────────────────────────────────────────
233 DEC[+-]CKM application cursor keys
234 DEC[+-]ANM set VT52 mode
235 DEC[+-]COLM 132-column mode
236 DEC[+-]SCLM smooth scroll
237 DEC[+-]SCNM reverse video mode
238 DEC[+-]OM origin mode
239 DEC[+-]AWM wraparound mode
240 DEC[+-]ARM auto-repeat mode
241 It also recognizes a SGR action corresponding to ANSI/ISO
243 6429/ECMA Set Graphics Rendition, with the values NORMAL, BOLD,
244 UNDERLINE, BLINK, and REVERSE. All but NORMAL may be prefixed
245 with `+' (turn on) or `-' (turn off).
246 An SGR0 designates an empty highlight sequence (equivalent to {SGR:NOR‐
248 MAL}).
249 -l Set output format to terminfo.
251 -p Ignore padding specifications when comparing strings.
253 -q Make the comparison listing shorter by omitting subheadings, and
255 using "-" for absent capabilities, "@" for canceled rather than
256 "NULL".
257 -Rsubset
259 Restrict output to a given subset. This option is for use with
260 archaic versions of terminfo like those on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX
261 that do not support the full set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and
262 variants such as AIX that have their own extensions incompatible
263 with SVr4/XSI. Available terminfo subsets are "SVr1", "Ultrix",
264 "HP", and "AIX"; see terminfo(5) for details. You can also choose
265 the subset "BSD" which selects only capabilities with termcap
266 equivalents recognized by 4.4BSD.
267 -s [d|i|l|c]
269 The -s option sorts the fields within each type according to the
270 argument below:
271 d leave fields in the order that they are stored in the ter‐
273 minfo database.
274 i sort by terminfo name.
276 l sort by the long C variable name.
278 c sort by the termcap name.
280 If the -s option is not given, the fields printed out will be
282 sorted alphabetically by the terminfo name within each type,
283 except in the case of the -C or the -L options, which cause the
284 sorting to be done by the termcap name or the long C variable
285 name, respectively.
286 -T eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text. This is
288 mainly useful for testing and analysis, since the compiled
289 descriptions are limited (e.g., 1023 for termcap, 4096 for ter‐
290 minfo).
291 -t tells tic to discard commented-out capabilities. Normally when
293 translating from terminfo to termcap, untranslatable capabilities
294 are commented-out.
295 -U tells infocmp to not post-process the data after parsing the
297 source file. This feature helps when comparing the actual con‐
298 tents of two source files, since it excludes the inferences that
299 infocmp makes to fill in missing data.
300 -V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this program, and
302 exits.
303 -v n prints out tracing information on standard error as the program
305 runs. Higher values of n induce greater verbosity.
306 -w width
308 changes the output to width characters.
309 -x print information for user-defined capabilities. These are exten‐
311 sions to the terminfo repertoire which can be loaded using the -x
312 option of tic.
313
315 /usr/share/terminfo Compiled terminal description database.
316
318 The -E, -F, -G, -R, -T, -V, -a, -e, -f, -g, -i, -l, -p, -q and -t
319 options are not supported in SVr4 curses.
320 The -r option's notion of `termcap' capabilities is System V Release
322 4's. Actual BSD curses versions will have a more restricted set. To
323 see only the 4.4BSD set, use -r -RBSD.
324
326 The -F option of infocmp(1M) should be a toe(1M) mode.
327
329 captoinfo(1M), infotocap(1M), tic(1M), toe(1M), curses(3X), ter‐
330 minfo(5).
331 This describes ncurses version 5.6 (patch 20070812).
333
335 Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> and
336 Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
337 infocmp(1M)