This program initializes terminals.
- First, tset retrieves the current terminal mode settings for your ter-
- minal. It does this by successively testing
+ First, tset retrieves the current terminal mode settings for your
+ terminal. It does this by successively testing
o the standard error,
@@ -82,37 +83,37 @@
3. (BSD systems only.) The terminal type associated with the standard
error output device in the /etc/ttys file. (On System-V-like UNIXes
- and systems using that convention, getty does this job by setting TERM
- according to the type passed to it by /etc/inittab.)
+ and systems using that convention, getty(1) does this job by setting
+ TERM according to the type passed to it by /etc/inittab.)
4. The default terminal type, "unknown".
If the terminal type was not specified on the command-line, the -m
option mappings are then applied (see the section TERMINALTYPEMAPPING
- for more information). Then, if the terminal type begins with a ques-
- tion mark ("?"), the user is prompted for confirmation of the terminal
- type. An empty response confirms the type, or, another type can be
- entered to specify a new type. Once the terminal type has been deter-
- mined, the terminal description for the terminal is retrieved. If no
- terminal description is found for the type, the user is prompted for
+ for more information). Then, if the terminal type begins with a
+ question mark ("?"), the user is prompted for confirmation of the
+ terminal type. An empty response confirms the type, or, another type
+ can be entered to specify a new type. Once the terminal type has been
+ determined, the terminal description for the terminal is retrieved. If
+ no terminal description is found for the type, the user is prompted for
another terminal type.
Once the terminal description is retrieved,
- o if the "-w" option is enabled, tset may update the terminal's win-
- dow size.
+ o if the "-w" option is enabled, tset may update the terminal's
+ window size.
If the window size cannot be obtained from the operating system,
- but the terminal description (or environment, e.g., LINES and COL-
- UMNS variables specify this), use this to set the operating sys-
- tem's notion of the window size.
+ but the terminal description (or environment, e.g., LINES and
+ COLUMNS variables specify this), use this to set the operating
+ system's notion of the window size.
o if the "-c" option is enabled, the backspace, interrupt and line
kill characters (among many other things) are set
- o unless the "-I" option is enabled, the terminal and tab initializa-
- tion strings are sent to the standard error output, and tset waits
- one second (in case a hardware reset was issued).
+ o unless the "-I" option is enabled, the terminal and tab
+ initialization strings are sent to the standard error output, and
+ tset waits one second (in case a hardware reset was issued).
o Finally, if the erase, interrupt and line kill characters have
changed, or are not set to their default values, their values are
@@ -153,21 +154,25 @@
-c Set control characters and modes.
- -e Set the erase character to ch.
+ -ech
+ Set the erase character to ch.
- -I Do not send the terminal or tab initialization strings to the ter-
- minal.
+ -I Do not send the terminal or tab initialization strings to the
+ terminal.
- -i Set the interrupt character to ch.
+ -ich
+ Set the interrupt character to ch.
- -k Set the line kill character to ch.
+ -kch
+ Set the line kill character to ch.
- -m Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal. See the section
+ -mmapping
+ Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal. See the section
TERMINALTYPEMAPPING for more information.
-Q Do not display any values for the erase, interrupt and line kill
- characters. Normally tset displays the values for control charac-
- ters which differ from the system's default values.
+ characters. Normally tset displays the values for control
+ characters which differ from the system's default values.
-q The terminal type is displayed to the standard output, and the
terminal is not initialized in any way. The option "-" by itself
@@ -201,128 +206,124 @@
When the -s option is specified, the commands to enter the information
into the shell's environment are written to the standard output. If
the SHELL environmental variable ends in "csh", the commands are for
- csh, otherwise, they are for sh. Note, the csh commands set and unset
- the shell variable noglob, leaving it unset. The following line in the
- .login or .profile files will initialize the environment correctly:
+ csh, otherwise, they are for sh(1). Note, the csh commands set and
+ unset the shell variable noglob, leaving it unset. The following line
+ in the .login or .profile files will initialize the environment
+ correctly:
eval `tset -s options ... `
- When the terminal is not hardwired into the system (or the current sys-
- tem information is incorrect) the terminal type derived from the
- /etc/ttys file or the TERM environmental variable is often something
- generic like network, dialup, or unknown. When tset is used in a
- startup script it is often desirable to provide information about the
+ When the terminal is not hardwired into the system (or the current
+ system information is incorrect) the terminal type derived from the
+ /etc/ttys file or the TERM environmental variable is often something
+ generic like network, dialup, or unknown. When tset is used in a
+ startup script it is often desirable to provide information about the
type of terminal used on such ports.
- The -m options maps from some set of conditions to a terminal type,
+ The -m options maps from some set of conditions to a terminal type,
that is, to tell tset "If I'm on this port at a particular speed, guess
that I'm on that kind of terminal".
- The argument to the -m option consists of an optional port type, an
- optional operator, an optional baud rate specification, an optional
- colon (":") character and a terminal type. The port type is a string
- (delimited by either the operator or the colon character). The opera-
- tor may be any combination of ">", "<", "@", and "!"; ">" means greater
- than, "<" means less than, "@" means equal to and "!" inverts the sense
- of the test. The baud rate is specified as a number and is compared
- with the speed of the standard error output (which should be the con-
- trol terminal). The terminal type is a string.
-
- If the terminal type is not specified on the command line, the -m map-
- pings are applied to the terminal type. If the port type and baud rate
- match the mapping, the terminal type specified in the mapping replaces
- the current type. If more than one mapping is specified, the first
- applicable mapping is used.
-
- For example, consider the following mapping: dialup>9600:vt100. The
+ The argument to the -m option consists of an optional port type, an
+ optional operator, an optional baud rate specification, an optional
+ colon (":") character and a terminal type. The port type is a string
+ (delimited by either the operator or the colon character). The
+ operator may be any combination of ">", "<", "@", and "!"; ">" means
+ greater than, "<" means less than, "@" means equal to and "!" inverts
+ the sense of the test. The baud rate is specified as a number and is
+ compared with the speed of the standard error output (which should be
+ the control terminal). The terminal type is a string.
+
+ If the terminal type is not specified on the command line, the -m
+ mappings are applied to the terminal type. If the port type and baud
+ rate match the mapping, the terminal type specified in the mapping
+ replaces the current type. If more than one mapping is specified, the
+ first applicable mapping is used.
+
+ For example, consider the following mapping: dialup>9600:vt100. The
port type is dialup , the operator is >, the baud rate specification is
9600, and the terminal type is vt100. The result of this mapping is to
- specify that if the terminal type is dialup, and the baud rate is
+ specify that if the terminal type is dialup, and the baud rate is
greater than 9600 baud, a terminal type of vt100 will be used.
- If no baud rate is specified, the terminal type will match any baud
- rate. If no port type is specified, the terminal type will match any
- port type. For example, -mdialup:vt100-m:?xterm will cause any
+ If no baud rate is specified, the terminal type will match any baud
+ rate. If no port type is specified, the terminal type will match any
+ port type. For example, -mdialup:vt100-m:?xterm will cause any
dialup port, regardless of baud rate, to match the terminal type vt100,
- and any non-dialup port type to match the terminal type ?xterm. Note,
- because of the leading question mark, the user will be queried on a
+ and any non-dialup port type to match the terminal type ?xterm. Note,
+ because of the leading question mark, the user will be queried on a
default port as to whether they are actually using an xterm terminal.
- No whitespace characters are permitted in the -m option argument.
- Also, to avoid problems with meta-characters, it is suggested that the
+ No whitespace characters are permitted in the -m option argument.
+ Also, to avoid problems with meta-characters, it is suggested that the
entire -m option argument be placed within single quote characters, and
- that csh users insert a backslash character ("\") before any exclama-
- tion marks ("!").
+ that csh users insert a backslash character ("\") before any
+ exclamation marks ("!").
- A reset command appeared in 2BSD (April 1979), written by Kurt Shoens.
- This program set the erase and kill characters to ^H (backspace) and @
+ A reset command appeared in 1BSD (March 1978), written by Kurt Shoens.
+ This program set the erase and kill characters to ^H (backspace) and @
respectively. Mark Horton improved that in 3BSD (October 1979), adding
- intr, quit, start/stop and eof characters as well as changing the pro-
- gram to avoid modifying any user settings.
-
- Later in 4.1BSD (December 1980), Mark Horton added a call to the tset
- program using the -I and -Q options, i.e., using that to improve the
- terminal modes. With those options, that version of reset did not use
- the termcap database.
+ intr, quit, start/stop and eof characters as well as changing the
+ program to avoid modifying any user settings. That version of reset
+ did not use the termcap database.
- A separate tset command was provided in 2BSD by Eric Allman. While the
- oldest published source (from 1979) provides both tset and reset, All-
- man's comments in the 2BSD source code indicate that he began work in
- October 1977, continuing development over the next few years.
+ A separate tset command was provided in 1BSD by Eric Allman, using the
+ termcap database. Allman's comments in the source code indicate that
+ he began work in October 1977, continuing development over the next few
+ years.
- In September 1980, Eric Allman modified tset, adding the code from the
- existing "reset" feature when tset was invoked as reset. Rather than
- simply copying the existing program, in this merged version, tset used
- the termcap database to do additional (re)initialization of the termi-
- nal. This version appeared in 4.1cBSD, late in 1982.
+ According to comments in the source code, the tset program was modified
+ in September 1980, to use logic copied from the 3BSD "reset" when it
+ was invoked as reset. This version appeared in 4.1cBSD, late in 1982.
Other developers (e.g., Keith Bostic and Jim Bloom) continued to modify
tset until 4.4BSD was released in 1993.
- The ncurses implementation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD sources
+ The ncurses implementation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD sources
for a terminfo environment by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>.
- Neither IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
+ Neither IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7
(POSIX.1-2008) nor X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents tset or reset.
- The AT&T tput utility (AIX, HPUX, Solaris) incorporated the terminal-
- mode manipulation as well as termcap-based features such as resetting
- tabstops from tset in BSD (4.1c), presumably with the intention of mak-
- ing tset obsolete. However, each of those systems still provides tset.
- In fact, the commonly-used reset utility is always an alias for tset.
+ The AT&T tput utility (AIX, HPUX, Solaris) incorporated the terminal-
+ mode manipulation as well as termcap-based features such as resetting
+ tabstops from tset in BSD (4.1c), presumably with the intention of
+ making tset obsolete. However, each of those systems still provides
+ tset. In fact, the commonly-used reset utility is always an alias for
+ tset.
- The tset utility provides for backward-compatibility with BSD environ-
- ments (under most modern UNIXes, /etc/inittab and getty(1) can set TERM
- appropriately for each dial-up line; this obviates what was tset's most
- important use). This implementation behaves like 4.4BSD tset, with a
- few exceptions specified here.
+ The tset utility provides for backward-compatibility with BSD
+ environments (under most modern UNIXes, /etc/inittab and getty(1) can
+ set TERM appropriately for each dial-up line; this obviates what was
+ tset's most important use). This implementation behaves like 4.4BSD
+ tset, with a few exceptions specified here.
A few options are different because the TERMCAP variable is no longer
supported under terminfo-based ncurses:
- o The -S option of BSD tset no longer works; it prints an error mes-
- sage to the standard error and dies.
+ o The -S option of BSD tset no longer works; it prints an error
+ message to the standard error and dies.
o The -s option only sets TERM, not TERMCAP.
There was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking tset via a link
- named "TSET" (or via any other name beginning with an upper-case let-
- ter) set the terminal to use upper-case only. This feature has been
+ named "TSET" (or via any other name beginning with an upper-case
+ letter) set the terminal to use upper-case only. This feature has been
omitted.
The -A, -E, -h, -u and -v options were deleted from the tset utility in
4.4BSD. None of them were documented in 4.3BSD and all are of limited
- utility at best. The -a, -d, and -p options are similarly not docu-
- mented or useful, but were retained as they appear to be in widespread
- use. It is strongly recommended that any usage of these three options
- be changed to use the -m option instead. The -a, -d, and -p options
- are therefore omitted from the usage summary above.
+ utility at best. The -a, -d, and -p options are similarly not
+ documented or useful, but were retained as they appear to be in
+ widespread use. It is strongly recommended that any usage of these
+ three options be changed to use the -m option instead. The -a, -d, and
+ -p options are therefore omitted from the usage summary above.
Very old systems, e.g., 3BSD, used a different terminal driver which
was replaced in 4BSD in the early 1980s. To accommodate these older
@@ -338,8 +339,8 @@
Also, the interaction between the - option and the terminal argument in
some historic implementations of tset has been removed.
- The -c and -w options are not found in earlier implementations. How-
- ever, a different window size-change feature was provided in 4.4BSD.
+ The -c and -w options are not found in earlier implementations.
+ However, a different window size-change feature was provided in 4.4BSD.
o In 4.4BSD, tset uses the window size from the termcap description
to set the window size if tset is not able to obtain the window
@@ -355,30 +356,31 @@
be unset only if there were some problem obtaining the value from the
operating system (and setupterm would still fail). For that reason,
the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables may be useful for working
- around window-size problems. Those have the drawback that if the win-
- dow is resized, those variables must be recomputed and reassigned. To
- do this more easily, use the resize(1) program.
+ around window-size problems. Those have the drawback that if the
+ window is resized, those variables must be recomputed and reassigned.
+ To do this more easily, use the resize(1) program.
The tset command uses these environment variables:
SHELL
- tells tset whether to initialize TERM using sh or csh syntax.
+ tells tset whether to initialize TERM using sh(1) or csh(1)
+ syntax.
- TERM Denotes your terminal type. Each terminal type is distinct,
+ TERM Denotes your terminal type. Each terminal type is distinct,
though many are similar.
TERMCAP
- may denote the location of a termcap database. If it is not an
- absolute pathname, e.g., begins with a "/", tset removes the vari-
- able from the environment before looking for the terminal descrip-
- tion.
+ may denote the location of a termcap database. If it is not an
+ absolute pathname, e.g., begins with a "/", tset removes the
+ variable from the environment before looking for the terminal
+ description.
/etc/ttys
- system port name to terminal type mapping database (BSD versions
+ system port name to terminal type mapping database (BSD versions
only).
/usr/share/terminfo
@@ -386,10 +388,10 @@