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29 * @Id: tset.1,v 1.43 2016/08/06 23:16:39 tom Exp @
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41 <H1 class="no-header">tset 1</H1>
43 <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG> <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
48 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-NAME">NAME</a></H2><PRE>
49 <STRONG>tset</STRONG>, <STRONG>reset</STRONG> - terminal initialization
52 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></H2><PRE>
53 <STRONG>tset</STRONG> [<STRONG>-IQVcqrsw</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-i</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-k</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-m</STRONG> <EM>mapping</EM>]
55 <STRONG>reset</STRONG> [<STRONG>-IQVcqrsw</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-</STRONG>] [<STRONG>-e</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-i</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-k</STRONG> <EM>ch</EM>] [<STRONG>-m</STRONG> <EM>mapping</EM>]
59 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></H2><PRE>
61 </PRE><H3><a name="h3-tset---initialization">tset - initialization</a></H3><PRE>
62 This program initializes terminals.
64 First, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> retrieves the current terminal mode settings
65 for your terminal. It does this by successively testing
67 <STRONG>o</STRONG> the standard error,
69 <STRONG>o</STRONG> standard output,
71 <STRONG>o</STRONG> standard input and
73 <STRONG>o</STRONG> ultimately "/dev/tty"
75 to obtain terminal settings. Having retrieved these set-
76 tings, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> remembers which file descriptor to use when
79 Next, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> determines the type of terminal that you are
80 using. This determination is done as follows, using the
81 first terminal type found.
83 1. The <STRONG>terminal</STRONG> argument specified on the command line.
85 2. The value of the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environmental variable.
87 3. (BSD systems only.) The terminal type associated with
88 the standard error output device in the <EM>/etc/ttys</EM> file.
89 (On System-V-like UNIXes and systems using that conven-
90 tion, <EM>getty</EM> does this job by setting <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> according to the
91 type passed to it by <EM>/etc/inittab</EM>.)
93 4. The default terminal type, "unknown".
95 If the terminal type was not specified on the command-
96 line, the <STRONG>-m</STRONG> option mappings are then applied (see the
97 section <STRONG>TERMINAL</STRONG> <STRONG>TYPE</STRONG> <STRONG>MAPPING</STRONG> for more information).
98 Then, if the terminal type begins with a question mark
99 ("?"), the user is prompted for confirmation of the termi-
100 nal type. An empty response confirms the type, or,
101 another type can be entered to specify a new type. Once
102 the terminal type has been determined, the terminfo entry
103 for the terminal is retrieved. If no terminfo entry is
104 found for the type, the user is prompted for another ter-
107 Once the terminfo entry is retrieved, the window size,
108 backspace, interrupt and line kill characters (among many
109 other things) are set and the terminal and tab initializa-
110 tion strings are sent to the standard error output.
111 Finally, if the erase, interrupt and line kill characters
112 have changed, or are not set to their default values,
113 their values are displayed to the standard error output.
116 </PRE><H3><a name="h3-reset---reinitialization">reset - reinitialization</a></H3><PRE>
117 When invoked as <STRONG>reset</STRONG>, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> sets cooked and echo modes,
118 turns off cbreak and raw modes, turns on newline transla-
119 tion and resets any unset special characters to their
120 default values before doing the terminal initialization
121 described above. This is useful after a program dies
122 leaving a terminal in an abnormal state. Note, you may
125 <EM><LF></EM><STRONG>reset</STRONG><EM><LF></EM>
127 (the line-feed character is normally control-J) to get the
128 terminal to work, as carriage-return may no longer work in
129 the abnormal state. Also, the terminal will often not
133 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-OPTIONS">OPTIONS</a></H2><PRE>
134 The options are as follows:
136 <STRONG>-c</STRONG> Set control characters and modes.
138 <STRONG>-e</STRONG> Set the erase character to <EM>ch</EM>.
140 <STRONG>-I</STRONG> Do not send the terminal or tab initialization
141 strings to the terminal.
143 <STRONG>-i</STRONG> Set the interrupt character to <EM>ch</EM>.
145 <STRONG>-k</STRONG> Set the line kill character to <EM>ch</EM>.
147 <STRONG>-m</STRONG> Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal.
148 See the section <STRONG>TERMINAL</STRONG> <STRONG>TYPE</STRONG> <STRONG>MAPPING</STRONG> for more infor-
151 <STRONG>-Q</STRONG> Do not display any values for the erase, interrupt
152 and line kill characters. Normally <STRONG>tset</STRONG> displays the
153 values for control characters which differ from the
154 system's default values.
156 <STRONG>-q</STRONG> The terminal type is displayed to the standard out-
157 put, and the terminal is not initialized in any way.
158 The option "-" by itself is equivalent but archaic.
160 <STRONG>-r</STRONG> Print the terminal type to the standard error output.
162 <STRONG>-s</STRONG> Print the sequence of shell commands to initialize
163 the environment variable <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> to the standard output.
164 See the section <STRONG>SETTING</STRONG> <STRONG>THE</STRONG> <STRONG>ENVIRONMENT</STRONG> for details.
166 <STRONG>-V</STRONG> reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
169 <STRONG>-w</STRONG> Resize the window to match the size deduced via
170 <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG>. Normally this has no effect, unless
171 <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> is not able to detect the window size.
173 The arguments for the <STRONG>-e</STRONG>, <STRONG>-i</STRONG>, and <STRONG>-k</STRONG> options may either be
174 entered as actual characters or by using the "hat" nota-
175 tion, i.e., control-h may be specified as "^H" or "^h".
177 If neither <STRONG>-c</STRONG> or <STRONG>-w</STRONG> is given, both options are assumed.
180 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-SETTING-THE-ENVIRONMENT">SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT</a></H2><PRE>
181 It is often desirable to enter the terminal type and
182 information about the terminal's capabilities into the
183 shell's environment. This is done using the <STRONG>-s</STRONG> option.
185 When the <STRONG>-s</STRONG> option is specified, the commands to enter the
186 information into the shell's environment are written to
187 the standard output. If the <STRONG>SHELL</STRONG> environmental variable
188 ends in "csh", the commands are for <STRONG>csh</STRONG>, otherwise, they
189 are for <STRONG>sh</STRONG>. Note, the <STRONG>csh</STRONG> commands set and unset the
190 shell variable <STRONG>noglob</STRONG>, leaving it unset. The following
191 line in the <STRONG>.login</STRONG> or <STRONG>.profile</STRONG> files will initialize the
192 environment correctly:
194 eval `tset -s options ... `
197 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-TERMINAL-TYPE-MAPPING">TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING</a></H2><PRE>
198 When the terminal is not hardwired into the system (or the
199 current system information is incorrect) the terminal type
200 derived from the <EM>/etc/ttys</EM> file or the <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> environmental
201 variable is often something generic like <STRONG>network</STRONG>, <STRONG>dialup</STRONG>,
202 or <STRONG>unknown</STRONG>. When <STRONG>tset</STRONG> is used in a startup script it is
203 often desirable to provide information about the type of
204 terminal used on such ports.
206 The <STRONG>-m</STRONG> options maps from some set of conditions to a ter-
207 minal type, that is, to tell <STRONG>tset</STRONG> "If I'm on this port at
208 a particular speed, guess that I'm on that kind of termi-
211 The argument to the <STRONG>-m</STRONG> option consists of an optional port
212 type, an optional operator, an optional baud rate specifi-
213 cation, an optional colon (":") character and a terminal
214 type. The port type is a string (delimited by either the
215 operator or the colon character). The operator may be any
216 combination of ">", "<", "@", and "!"; ">" means greater
217 than, "<" means less than, "@" means equal to and "!"
218 inverts the sense of the test. The baud rate is specified
219 as a number and is compared with the speed of the standard
220 error output (which should be the control terminal). The
221 terminal type is a string.
223 If the terminal type is not specified on the command line,
224 the <STRONG>-m</STRONG> mappings are applied to the terminal type. If the
225 port type and baud rate match the mapping, the terminal
226 type specified in the mapping replaces the current type.
227 If more than one mapping is specified, the first applica-
230 For example, consider the following mapping:
231 <STRONG>dialup>9600:vt100</STRONG>. The port type is dialup , the operator
232 is >, the baud rate specification is 9600, and the termi-
233 nal type is vt100. The result of this mapping is to spec-
234 ify that if the terminal type is <STRONG>dialup</STRONG>, and the baud rate
235 is greater than 9600 baud, a terminal type of <STRONG>vt100</STRONG> will
238 If no baud rate is specified, the terminal type will match
239 any baud rate. If no port type is specified, the terminal
240 type will match any port type. For example, <STRONG>-m</STRONG>
241 <STRONG>dialup:vt100</STRONG> <STRONG>-m</STRONG> <STRONG>:?xterm</STRONG> will cause any dialup port,
242 regardless of baud rate, to match the terminal type vt100,
243 and any non-dialup port type to match the terminal type
244 ?xterm. Note, because of the leading question mark, the
245 user will be queried on a default port as to whether they
246 are actually using an xterm terminal.
248 No whitespace characters are permitted in the <STRONG>-m</STRONG> option
249 argument. Also, to avoid problems with meta-characters,
250 it is suggested that the entire <STRONG>-m</STRONG> option argument be
251 placed within single quote characters, and that <STRONG>csh</STRONG> users
252 insert a backslash character ("\") before any exclamation
256 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-HISTORY">HISTORY</a></H2><PRE>
257 A <STRONG>reset</STRONG> command appeared in 2BSD (1979), written by Kurt
260 A separate <STRONG>tset</STRONG> command was provided in 2BSD by Eric All-
261 man. While the oldest published source (from 1979) pro-
262 vides both programs, Allman's comments in the 2BSD source
263 code indicate that he began work in October 1977, continu-
264 ing development over the next few years.
266 In 1980, Eric Allman modified <STRONG>tset</STRONG> to provide a "reset"
267 feature when the program was invoked as <STRONG>reset</STRONG>.
269 The <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> implementation was lightly adapted from the
270 4.4BSD sources for a terminfo environment by Eric S. Ray-
271 mond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>.
274 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-COMPATIBILITY">COMPATIBILITY</a></H2><PRE>
275 Neither IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open Group Base Specifications
276 Issue 7 (POSIX.1-2008) nor X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents
277 <STRONG>tset</STRONG> or <STRONG>reset</STRONG>.
279 The AT&T <STRONG>tput</STRONG> utility (AIX, HPUX, Solaris) incorporated
280 the terminal-mode manipulation as well as termcap-based
281 features such as resetting tabstops from <STRONG>tset</STRONG> in BSD
282 (4.1c), presumably with the intention of making <STRONG>tset</STRONG> obso-
283 lete. However, each of those systems still provides <STRONG>tset</STRONG>.
284 In fact, the commonly-used <STRONG>reset</STRONG> utility is always an
285 alias for <STRONG>tset</STRONG>.
287 The <STRONG>tset</STRONG> utility provides for backward-compatibility with
288 BSD environments (under most modern UNIXes, <STRONG>/etc/inittab</STRONG>
289 and <STRONG>getty(1)</STRONG> can set <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> appropriately for each dial-up
290 line; this obviates what was <STRONG>tset</STRONG>'s most important use).
291 This implementation behaves like 4.4BSD <STRONG>tset</STRONG>, with a few
292 exceptions specified here.
294 A few options are different because the <STRONG>TERMCAP</STRONG> variable
295 is no longer supported under terminfo-based <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG>:
297 <STRONG>o</STRONG> The <STRONG>-S</STRONG> option of BSD <STRONG>tset</STRONG> no longer works; it prints
298 an error message to the standard error and dies.
300 <STRONG>o</STRONG> The <STRONG>-s</STRONG> option only sets <STRONG>TERM</STRONG>, not <STRONG>TERMCAP</STRONG>.
302 There was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking
303 <STRONG>tset</STRONG> via a link named "TSET" (or via any other name begin-
304 ning with an upper-case letter) set the terminal to use
305 upper-case only. This feature has been omitted.
307 The <STRONG>-A</STRONG>, <STRONG>-E</STRONG>, <STRONG>-h</STRONG>, <STRONG>-u</STRONG> and <STRONG>-v</STRONG> options were deleted from the
308 <STRONG>tset</STRONG> utility in 4.4BSD. None of them were documented in
309 4.3BSD and all are of limited utility at best. The <STRONG>-a</STRONG>,
310 <STRONG>-d</STRONG>, and <STRONG>-p</STRONG> options are similarly not documented or useful,
311 but were retained as they appear to be in widespread use.
312 It is strongly recommended that any usage of these three
313 options be changed to use the <STRONG>-m</STRONG> option instead. The <STRONG>-a</STRONG>,
314 <STRONG>-d</STRONG>, and <STRONG>-p</STRONG> options are therefore omitted from the usage
317 Very old systems, e.g., 3BSD, used a different terminal
318 driver which was replaced in 4BSD in the early 1980s. To
319 accommodate these older systems, the 4BSD <STRONG>tset</STRONG> provided a
320 <STRONG>-n</STRONG> option to specify that the new terminal driver should
321 be used. This implementation does not provide that
324 It is still permissible to specify the <STRONG>-e</STRONG>, <STRONG>-i</STRONG>, and <STRONG>-k</STRONG>
325 options without arguments, although it is strongly recom-
326 mended that such usage be fixed to explicitly specify the
329 As of 4.4BSD, executing <STRONG>tset</STRONG> as <STRONG>reset</STRONG> no longer implies
330 the <STRONG>-Q</STRONG> option. Also, the interaction between the - option
331 and the <EM>terminal</EM> argument in some historic implementations
332 of <STRONG>tset</STRONG> has been removed.
334 The <STRONG>-c</STRONG> and <STRONG>-w</STRONG> options are not found in earlier implementa-
335 tions. However, a different window size-change feature
336 was provided in 4.4BSD.
338 <STRONG>o</STRONG> In 4.4BSD, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> uses the window size from the termcap
339 description to set the window size if <STRONG>tset</STRONG> is not able
340 to obtain the window size from the operating system.
342 <STRONG>o</STRONG> In ncurses, <STRONG>tset</STRONG> obtains the window size using
343 <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG>, which may be from the operating system, the
344 <STRONG>LINES</STRONG> and <STRONG>COLUMNS</STRONG> environment variables or the termi-
347 Obtaining the window size from the terminal description is
348 common to both implementations, but considered obsoles-
349 cent. Its only practical use is for hardware terminals.
350 Generally speaking, a window size would be unset only if
351 there were some problem obtaining the value from the oper-
352 ating system (and <STRONG>setupterm</STRONG> would still fail). For that
353 reason, the <STRONG>LINES</STRONG> and <STRONG>COLUMNS</STRONG> environment variables may be
354 useful for working around window-size problems. Those
355 have the drawback that if the window is resized, those
356 variables must be recomputed and reassigned. To do this
357 more easily, use the <STRONG><A HREF="resize.1.html">resize(1)</A></STRONG> program.
360 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-ENVIRONMENT">ENVIRONMENT</a></H2><PRE>
361 The <STRONG>tset</STRONG> command uses these environment variables:
364 tells <STRONG>tset</STRONG> whether to initialize <STRONG>TERM</STRONG> using <STRONG>sh</STRONG> or <STRONG>csh</STRONG>
367 TERM Denotes your terminal type. Each terminal type is
368 distinct, though many are similar.
371 may denote the location of a termcap database. If it
372 is not an absolute pathname, e.g., begins with a "/",
373 <STRONG>tset</STRONG> removes the variable from the environment before
374 looking for the terminal description.
377 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-FILES">FILES</a></H2><PRE>
379 system port name to terminal type mapping database
383 terminal capability database
386 </PRE><H2><a name="h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></H2><PRE>
387 <STRONG>csh(1)</STRONG>, <STRONG>sh(1)</STRONG>, <STRONG>stty(1)</STRONG>, <STRONG><A HREF="curs_terminfo.3x.html">curs_terminfo(3x)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG>tty(4)</STRONG>,
388 <STRONG><A HREF="terminfo.5.html">terminfo(5)</A></STRONG>, <STRONG>ttys(5)</STRONG>, <STRONG>environ(7)</STRONG>
390 This describes <STRONG>ncurses</STRONG> version 6.0 (patch 20161015).
394 <STRONG><A HREF="tset.1.html">tset(1)</A></STRONG>
398 <li><a href="#h2-NAME">NAME</a></li>
399 <li><a href="#h2-SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></li>
400 <li><a href="#h2-DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a>
402 <li><a href="#h3-tset---initialization">tset - initialization</a></li>
403 <li><a href="#h3-reset---reinitialization">reset - reinitialization</a></li>
406 <li><a href="#h2-OPTIONS">OPTIONS</a></li>
407 <li><a href="#h2-SETTING-THE-ENVIRONMENT">SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT</a></li>
408 <li><a href="#h2-TERMINAL-TYPE-MAPPING">TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING</a></li>
409 <li><a href="#h2-HISTORY">HISTORY</a></li>
410 <li><a href="#h2-COMPATIBILITY">COMPATIBILITY</a></li>
411 <li><a href="#h2-ENVIRONMENT">ENVIRONMENT</a></li>
412 <li><a href="#h2-FILES">FILES</a></li>
413 <li><a href="#h2-SEE-ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></li>