- Tset initializes terminals. Tset first determines the
+ Tset initializes terminals. Tset first determines the
type of terminal that you are using. This determination
is done as follows, using the first terminal type found.
- 1. The terminal argument specified on the command line.
+ 1. The terminal argument specified on the command line.
- 2. The value of the TERM environmental variable.
+ 2. The value of the TERM environmental variable.
3. (BSD systems only.) The terminal type associated with
- the standard error output device in the /etc/ttys file.
- (On Linux and System-V-like UNIXes, getty does this job by
- setting TERM according to the type passed to it by
- /etc/inittab.)
+ the standard error output device in the /etc/ttys file.
+ (On System-V-like UNIXes and systems using that conven-
+ tion, getty 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 below
- 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 con-
- firms the type, or, another type can be entered to specify
- a new type. Once the terminal type has been determined,
- the terminfo entry for the terminal is retrieved. If no
- terminfo entry is found for the type, the user is prompted
- for another terminal type.
-
- Once the terminfo entry is retrieved, the window size,
- backspace, interrupt and line kill characters (among many
+ line, the -m option mappings are then applied (see the
+ section TERMINALTYPEMAPPING for more information).
+ Then, if the terminal type begins with a question mark
+ (``?''), the user is prompted for confirmation of the ter-
+ minal 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 terminfo entry
+ for the terminal is retrieved. If no terminfo entry is
+ found for the type, the user is prompted for another ter-
+ minal type.
+
+ Once the terminfo entry is retrieved, the window size,
+ backspace, interrupt and line kill characters (among many
other things) are set and the terminal and tab initializa-
- tion strings are sent to the standard error output.
- Finally, if the erase, interrupt and line kill characters
- have changed, or are not set to their default values,
- their values are displayed to the standard error output.
-
- When invoked as reset, tset sets cooked and echo modes,
+ tion strings are sent to the standard error output.
+ Finally, if the erase, interrupt and line kill characters
+ have changed, or are not set to their default values,
+ their values are displayed to the standard error output.
+ Use the -c or -w option to select only the window sizing
+ versus the other initialization. If neither option is
+ given, both are assumed.
+
+ When invoked as reset, tset sets cooked and echo modes,
turns off cbreak and raw modes, turns on newline transla-
tion and resets any unset special characters to their
default values before doing the terminal initialization
@@ -61,7 +107,7 @@
leaving a terminal in an abnormal state. Note, you may
have to type
- <LF>reset<LF>
+ <LF>reset<LF>
(the line-feed character is normally control-J) to get the
terminal to work, as carriage-return may no longer work in
@@ -70,229 +116,214 @@
The options are as follows:
- -q The terminal type is displayed to the standard out-
- put, and the terminal is not initialized in any way.
- The option `-' by itself is equivalent but archaic.
-
- -e Set the erase character to ch.
+ -c Set control characters and modes. -e Set the erase
+ character to ch.
- -I Do not send the terminal or tab initialization
+ -I Do not send the terminal or tab initialization
strings to the terminal.
- -i Set the interrupt character to ch.
+ -i Set the interrupt character to ch.
- -k Set the line kill character to ch.
+ -k Set the line kill character to ch.
- -m Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal.
- See below for more information.
+ -m Specify a mapping from a port type to a terminal.
+ See the section TERMINALTYPEMAPPING for more infor-
+ mation.
- -Q Don't display any values for the erase, interrupt and
- line kill characters.
+ -Q Do not display any values for the erase, interrupt
+ and line kill characters. Normally tset displays the
+ values for control characters which differ from the
+ system's default values.
- -r Print the terminal type to the standard error output.
+ -q The terminal type is displayed to the standard out-
+ put, and the terminal is not initialized in any way.
+ The option `-' by itself is equivalent but archaic.
+
+ -r Print the terminal type to the standard error output.
+
+ -s Print the sequence of shell commands to initialize
+ the environment variable TERM to the standard output.
+ See the section SETTINGTHEENVIRONMENT for details.
+
+ -V reports the version of ncurses which was used in this
+ program, and exits.
- -s Print the sequence of shell commands to initialize
- the environment variable TERM to the standard output.
- See the section below on setting the environment for
- details.
+ -w Resize the window to match the size deduced via
+ setupterm. Normally this has no effect, unless
+ setupterm is not able to detect the window size.
- The arguments for the -e, -i, and -k options may either be
- entered as actual characters or by using the `hat' nota-
- tion, i.e. control-h may be specified as ``^H'' or ``^h''.
+ The arguments for the -e, -i, and -k options may either be
+ entered as actual characters or by using the `hat' nota-
+ tion, i.e., control-h may be specified as ``^H'' or
+ ``^h''.
SETTING THE ENVIRONMENT
- It is often desirable to enter the terminal type and
- information about the terminal's capabilities into the
- shell's environment. This is done using the -s option.
-
- 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
+ It is often desirable to enter the terminal type and
+ information about the terminal's capabilities into the
+ shell's environment. This is done using the -s option.
+
+ 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:
eval `tset -s options ... `
-
TERMINAL TYPE MAPPING
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
+ 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 purpose of the -m option is to map 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
+ The purpose of the -m option is to map 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
+ The argument to the -m option consists of an optional port
type, an optional operator, an optional baud rate specifi-
cation, an optional colon (``:'') character and a terminal
- type. The port type is a string (delimited by either the
+ 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
+ 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
+ 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 applica-
+ 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 applica-
ble 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 termi-
+ 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 termi-
nal type is vt100. The result of this mapping is to spec-
- ify that if the terminal type is dialup, and the baud rate
- is greater than 9600 baud, a terminal type of vt100 will
+ ify 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, -m
- dialup:vt100-m:?xterm will cause any dialup port,
+ type will match any port type. For example, -m
+ dialup: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 default port as to whether they
+ 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 entire -m option argument be
- placed within single quote characters, and that csh users
- insert a backslash character (``\'') before any exclama-
+ 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 (``!'').
HISTORY
- The tset command appeared in BSD 3.0. The ncurses imple-
- mentation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD sources for
+ The tset command appeared in BSD 3.0. The ncurses imple-
+ mentation was lightly adapted from the 4.4BSD sources for
a terminfo environment by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyr-
sus.com>.
COMPATIBILITY
- The tset utility has been provided for backward-compati-
- bility 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
+ The tset utility has been provided for backward-compati-
+ bility 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.
- The -S option of BSD tset no longer works; it prints an
- error message to stderr and dies. The -s option only sets
- TERM, not TERMCAP. Both these changes are because the
- TERMCAP variable is no longer supported under terminfo-
- based ncurses, which makes tset-S useless (we made it die
+ The -S option of BSD tset no longer works; it prints an
+ error message to stderr and dies. The -s option only sets
+ TERM, not TERMCAP. Both these changes are because the
+ TERMCAP variable is no longer supported under terminfo-
+ based ncurses, which makes tset-S useless (we made it die
noisily rather than silently induce lossage).
- There was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking
+ There was an undocumented 4.4BSD feature that invoking
tset via a link named `TSET` (or via any other name begin-
- ning with an upper-case letter) set the terminal to use
+ ning 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 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 -n
- option remains, but has no effect. The -adnp options are
+ 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 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 -n
+ option remains, but has no effect. The -adnp options are
therefore omitted from the usage summary above.
- It is still permissible to specify the -e, -i, and -k
- options without arguments, although it is strongly recom-
- mended that such usage be fixed to explicitly specify the
+ It is still permissible to specify the -e, -i, and -k
+ options without arguments, although it is strongly recom-
+ mended that such usage be fixed to explicitly specify the
character.
- As of 4.4BSD, executing tset as reset no longer implies
- the -Q option. Also, the interaction between the - option
- and the terminal argument in some historic implementations
- of tset has been removed.
+ As of 4.4BSD, executing tset as reset no longer implies
+ the -Q option. Also, the interaction between the - option
+ and the terminal argument in some historic implementations
+ of tset has been removed.
ENVIRONMENT
- The tset command uses the SHELL and TERM environment vari-
- ables.
+ The tset command uses these environment variables:
+
+ SHELL
+ tells tset whether to initialize TERM using sh or csh
+ syntax.
+
+ 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 variable from the environment before
+ looking for the terminal description.
FILES
/etc/ttys
- system port name to terminal type mapping database
+ system port name to terminal type mapping database
(BSD versions only).
- @DATADIR@/terminfo
+ /usr/share/terminfo
terminal capability database