tput(1) tput(1)
tput, reset - initialize a terminal or query terminfo
database
tput [-Ttype] capname [parameters]
tput [-Ttype] clear
tput [-Ttype] init
tput [-Ttype] reset
tput [-Ttype] longname
tput -S <<
tput -V
The tput utility uses the terminfo database to make the
values of terminal-dependent capabilities and information
available to the shell (see sh(1)), to initialize or reset
the terminal, or return the long name of the requested
terminal type. The result depends upon the capability's
type:
string
tput writes the string to the standard output. No
trailing newline is supplied.
integer
tput writes the decimal value to the standard out-
put, with a trailing newline.
boolean
tput simply sets the exit code (0 for TRUE if the
terminal has the capability, 1 for FALSE if it
does not), and writes nothing to the standard out-
put.
Before using a value returned on the standard output, the
application should test the exit code (e.g., $?, see
sh(1)) to be sure it is 0. (See the EXIT CODES and DIAG-
NOSTICS sections.) For a complete list of capabilities
and the capname associated with each, see terminfo(5).
-Ttype indicates the type of terminal. Normally this
option is unnecessary, because the default is taken
from the environment variable TERM. If -T is spec-
ified, then the shell variables LINES and COLUMNS
will also be ignored.
-S allows more than one capability per invocation of
tput. The capabilities must be passed to tput from
the standard input instead of from the command line
(see example). Only one capname is allowed per
line. The -S option changes the meaning of the 0
and 1 boolean and string exit codes (see the EXIT
CODES section).
Again, tput uses a table and the presence of param-
eters in its input to decide whether to use
tparm(3x), and how to interpret the parameters.
-V reports the version of ncurses which was used in
this program, and exits.
capname
indicates the capability from the terminfo data-
base. When termcap support is compiled in, the
termcap name for the capability is also accepted.
If the capability is a string that takes parame-
ters, the arguments following the capability will
be used as parameters for the string.
Most parameters are numbers. Only a few terminfo
capabilities require string parameters; tput uses a
table to decide which to pass as strings. Normally
tput uses tparm(3x) to perform the substitution.
If no parameters are given for the capability, tput
writes the string without performing the substitu-
tion.
init If the terminfo database is present and an entry
for the user's terminal exists (see -Ttype, above),
the following will occur:
(1) if present, the terminal's initialization
strings will be output as detailed in the ter-
minfo(5) section on Tabs and Initialization,
(2) any delays (e.g., newline) specified in the
entry will be set in the tty driver,
(3) tabs expansion will be turned on or off
according to the specification in the entry,
and
(4) if tabs are not expanded, standard tabs will
be set (every 8 spaces).
If an entry does not contain the information needed
for any of these activities, that activity will
silently be skipped.
reset Instead of putting out initialization strings, the
terminal's reset strings will be output if present
(rs1, rs2, rs3, rf). If the reset strings are not
present, but initialization strings are, the ini-
tialization strings will be output. Otherwise,
reset acts identically to init.
longname
If the terminfo database is present and an entry
for the user's terminal exists (see -Ttype above),
then the long name of the terminal will be put out.
The long name is the last name in the first line of
the terminal's description in the terminfo database
[see term(5)].
tput handles the clear, init and reset commands specially:
it allows for the possibility that it is invoked by a link
with those names.
If tput is invoked by a link named reset, this has the
same effect as tput reset. The tset(1) utility also
treats a link named reset specially.
Before ncurses 6.1, the two utilities were different from
each other:
o tset utility reset the terminal modes and special
characters (not done with tput).
o On the other hand, tset's repertoire of terminal capa-
bilities for resetting the terminal was more limited,
i.e., only reset_1string, reset_2string and reset_file
in contrast to the tab-stops and margins which are set
by this utility.
o The reset program is usually an alias for tset,
because of this difference with resetting terminal
modes and special characters.
If tput is invoked by a link named init, this has the same
effect as tput init. Again, you are less likely to use
that link because another program named init has a more
well-established use.
tput init
Initialize the terminal according to the type of ter-
minal in the environmental variable TERM. This com-
mand should be included in everyone's .profile after
the environmental variable TERM has been exported, as
illustrated on the profile(5) manual page.
tput -T5620 reset
Reset an AT&T 5620 terminal, overriding the type of
terminal in the environmental variable TERM.
tput cup 0 0
Send the sequence to move the cursor to row 0, column
0 (the upper left corner of the screen, usually known
as the "home" cursor position).
tput clear
Echo the clear-screen sequence for the current termi-
nal.
tput cols
Print the number of columns for the current terminal.
tput -T450 cols
Print the number of columns for the 450 terminal.
bold=`tput smso` offbold=`tput rmso`
Set the shell variables bold, to begin stand-out mode
sequence, and offbold, to end standout mode sequence,
for the current terminal. This might be followed by
a prompt: echo "${bold}Please type in your name:
${offbold}\c"
tput hc
Set exit code to indicate if the current terminal is
a hard copy terminal.
tput cup 23 4
Send the sequence to move the cursor to row 23, col-
umn 4.
tput cup
Send the terminfo string for cursor-movement, with no
parameters substituted.
tput longname
Print the long name from the terminfo database for
the type of terminal specified in the environmental
variable TERM.
tput -S <<!
> clear
> cup 10 10
> bold
> !
This example shows tput processing several capabili-
ties in one invocation. It clears the screen, moves
the cursor to position 10, 10 and turns on bold
(extra bright) mode. The list is terminated by an
exclamation mark (!) on a line by itself.
/usr/share/terminfo
compiled terminal description database
/usr/share/tabset/*
tab settings for some terminals, in a format appro-
priate to be output to the terminal (escape
sequences that set margins and tabs); for more
information, see the Tabs and Initialization, sec-
tion of terminfo(5)
If the -S option is used, tput checks for errors from each
line, and if any errors are found, will set the exit code
to 4 plus the number of lines with errors. If no errors
are found, the exit code is 0. No indication of which
line failed can be given so exit code 1 will never appear.
Exit codes 2, 3, and 4 retain their usual interpretation.
If the -S option is not used, the exit code depends on the
type of capname:
boolean
a value of 0 is set for TRUE and 1 for FALSE.
string a value of 0 is set if the capname is defined
for this terminal type (the value of capname is
returned on standard output); a value of 1 is
set if capname is not defined for this terminal
type (nothing is written to standard output).
integer
a value of 0 is always set, whether or not cap-
name is defined for this terminal type. To
determine if capname is defined for this termi-
nal type, the user must test the value written
to standard output. A value of -1 means that
capname is not defined for this terminal type.
other reset or init may fail to find their respective
files. In that case, the exit code is set to 4
+ errno.
Any other exit code indicates an error; see the DIAGNOS-
TICS section.
tput prints the following error messages and sets the cor-
responding exit codes.
exit code error message
---------------------------------------------------------------------
0 (capname is a numeric variable that is not specified in
the terminfo(5) database for this terminal type, e.g.
tput -T450 lines and tput -T2621 xmc)
1 no error message is printed, see the EXIT CODES section.
2 usage error
3 unknown terminal type or no terminfo database
4 unknown terminfo capability capname
>4 error occurred in -S
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The tput command was begun by Bill Joy in 1980. The ini-
tial version only cleared the screen.
AT&T System V provided a different tput command, whose
init and reset subcommands (more than half the program)
were incorporated from the reset feature of BSD tset writ-
ten by Eric Allman. Later the corresponding source code
for reset was removed from the BSD tset (in June 1993,
released in 4.4BSD-Lite a year later).
Keith Bostic replaced the BSD tput command in 1989 with a
new implementation based on the AT&T System V program
tput. Like the AT&T program, Bostic's version accepted
some parameters named for terminfo capabilities (clear,
init, longname and reset). However (because he had only
termcap available), it accepted termcap names for other
capabilities. Also, Bostic's BSD tput did not modify the
terminal I/O modes as the earlier BSD tset had done.
At the same time, Bostic added a shell script named
"clear", which used tput to clear the screen.
Both of these appeared in 4.4BSD, becoming the "modern"
BSD implementation of tput.
This implementation of tput differs from AT&T tput in two
important areas:
o tput capname writes to the standard output. That need
not be a regular terminal. However, the subcommands
which manipulate terminal modes may not use the stan-
dard output.
The AT&T implementation's init and reset commands use
the BSD (4.1c) tset source, which manipulates terminal
modes. It successively tries standard output, stan-
dard error, standard input before falling back to
"/dev/tty" and finally just assumes a 1200Bd terminal.
When updating terminal modes, it ignores errors.
Until changes made after ncurses 6.0, tput did not
modify terminal modes. tput now uses a similar
scheme, using functions shared with tset (and ulti-
mately based on the 4.4BSD tset). If it is not able
to open a terminal, e.g., when running in cron, tput
will return an error.
o AT&T tput guesses the type of its capname operands by
seeing if all of the characters are numeric, or not.
Most implementations which provide support for capname
operands use the tparm function to expand parameters
in it. That function expects a mixture of numeric and
string parameters, requiring tput to know which type
to use.
This implementation uses a table to determine the
parameter types for the standard capname operands, and
an internal library function to analyze nonstandard
capname operands.
The longname and -S options, and the parameter-substitu-
tion features used in the cup example, were not supported
in BSD curses before 4.3reno (1989) or in AT&T/USL curses
before SVr4 (1988).
IEEE Std 1003.1/The Open Group Base Specifications Issue
7 (POSIX.1-2008) documents only the operands for clear,
init and reset. There are a few interesting observations
to make regarding that:
o In this implementation, clear is part of the capname
support. The others (init and longname) do not corre-
spond to terminal capabilities.
o Other implementations of tput on SVr4-based systems
such as Solaris, IRIX64 and HPUX as well as others
such as AIX and Tru64 provide support for capname op-
erands.
o A few platforms such as FreeBSD recognize termcap
names rather than terminfo capability names in their
respective tput commands. Since 2010, NetBSD's tput
uses terminfo names. Before that, it (like FreeBSD)
recognized termcap names.
Because (apparently) all of the certified Unix systems
support the full set of capability names, the reasoning
for documenting only a few may not be apparent.
o X/Open Curses Issue 7 documents tput differently, with
capname and the other features used in this implemen-
tation.
o That is, there are two standards for tput: POSIX (a
subset) and X/Open Curses (the full implementation).
POSIX documents a subset to avoid the complication of
including X/Open Curses and the terminal capabilities
database.
o While it is certainly possible to write a tput program
without using curses, none of the systems which have a
curses implementation provide a tput utility which
does not provide the capname feature.
clear(1), stty(1), tabs(1), tset(1), terminfo(5),
curs_termcap(3x).
This describes ncurses version 6.0 (patch 20161203).
tput(1)